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THE MURMURING MAID 



QUESTS OF A 
BIRD LOVER 



BY 



JENNIE BROOKS 







BOSTON 
RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 



Copyright, 1922, by Jennie Brooks 



All Rights Reserved 

"■pi* 



Made in the United States of America 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



5 ,:■-" 



To 
ELEANOR H. 

whose loving kindness shine9 through sunny- 
days, or dark; and to whose graciousness this 
little flock of birds owes its further flight 
out into a lovely world; and in whose trees 
and beautiful garden all birds find sanctuary 



I am indebted to Lippincotfs Magazine, and 
various other periodicals, for the privilege of re- 
printing in book form some of these sketches. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A Leading of Providence 1 1 

The Aliens 21 

The Daisy Fields 35 

Among the Berkshires 45 

Out-of-Door Things 53 

A Night in the Open 65 

Snow-Time 74 

What's in the Making of a Nest .... 84 

Socrates 92 

St. Valentine's Day and the Birds . . . 104 

Flower-Gardens and River Floods on the 

Banks of the Kaw ....... 113 

At the Old Stone Bridge 124 

Gratitude of an After-Easter Robin . . . 132 

Wanderings Over a Louisiana Plantation . 139 

"Via Dolorosa" 145 

Willing Captives 152 

My Way of Learning About Birds . . . 161 

A Buzzard's Nest 177 

7 



'When is it Spring? When spirits rise. 
Pure crocus-buds where the snow dies; 
When bits of blue flit and sing, 
Playing at birds — then is it Spring?*' 
"When is it Spring? When the bee hums?' 

'When bright ways numberless we see, 
And thoughts spring up, and hopes run free, 
And wild new dreams are all on wing 
Till we must either fly or sing 
With riotous life — be sure 'tis Spring." 



QUESTS OF A BIRD 
LOVER 

A LEADING OF PROVIDENCE 

"My brothers, the birds, much ought 
ye to praise your Creator, Who hath 
clothed you with feathers ', and given 
you wings to fly, and hath made over 
unto you the pure air, and careth for 
you without your taking thought for 
yourselves" 

'Twas a hazy, lazy afternoon, just the day to 
wander along sleepy roads and climb distant hills, 
following flit of wing and tone of bird ; but, though 
"Riley" was companionable to a degree, I wanted 
someone along to be happy with me in the big 
beautiful out-of-doors. But to my invitation, with 
one accord, came answer from friends, "I pray 
thee, have me excused.'' 

Now, there are roads innumerable, tree-bor- 
dered, leading out of the little, western college 
town. "Blue Mound" way is one, "Eudora 
Road" another; the old "Santa Fe Trail," run- 

ii 



12 Quests of a Bird Lover 

ning toward the sunset; and for months, I had not 
thought of crossing the somnolent "Kaw" to the 
other side. Why, then, should it on this day seem 
so imperative a thing to do? Someone knew 
better than I — Someone Who allows not even 
a small gray sparrow to fall without His knowl- 
edge. 

Almost, I had turned petulantly about for 
home, when a town-weary friend came in sight, 
her wits a-dust with the powdery whirlings from 
asphalt, but her heart a-dream with primroses! 

"To cross the river? Yes, oh, yes let's go to 
the greenhouse on that side !" came joyous re- 
sponse, "I want some flowers." 

Flowers, indeed! "No botanical excursion is 
this," I declared sternly, "but a bird-hunt, — away 
off beyond those misty hills!" 

Faint acquiescence from my friend as she 
climbed into our "one hoss shay" but ever and 
anon, as we jogged along, came to my ear the 
wistful murmur, "I wish I could have had the 
flowers!" 

"Oh, why did I ask her?" I pondered im- 
patiently, "thus to spoil my day!" But "Riley" 
stubbornly kept his chosen road, and I was still 
determined on my bird quest. 

"Just beyond the hills!" I urged. 

" Tis primrose time !" came melancholy reply. 

I looked into her disappointed face. Well — 1 



A Leading of Providence 13 

have "Riley" every day; every day she walks. 
Jerk go the reins, and, turning, we stumble over 
wide fields, "across lots" to the. greenhouse 
With mighty poor grace, I gave up! No birds 
to-day, that's certain! 

Hot, sandy, sun-baked, lay the flat land, a 
wide waste of one-time flooded pasture, but 
eventually we reached our destination, hitched 
"Riley" to a one-rail fence, and alighted. 

Happily, now she had her way, my friend went 
up to meet the Mistress of the Flowers, while I 
remained discontentedly outside, digging the toe 
of my shoe into the sand, and grumbling into 
"Riley's" slow-wagging ear. 

Flutter of wing, and cry of bird! It smote my 
heart as quickly as my hearing. Alert in an instant 
was I. 

An unrecognizable bird tone to me, but, I 
scrambled wildly through the wicket gate, up the 
wooden steps, and ran around the house, follow- 
ing a call of exquisite pain. 

A beautiful, distraught male cardinal bird 
beating his life out against the bars of a tiny 
cage! 

I almost fell upon my knees in thankfulness ! 

My afternoon was not to be wasted after all ! 

How he suffered — that bird! Absolutely 
crazed with fear, his eyes wild and staring, 
feathers torn and ragged, besmirched with blood, 



14 Quests of a Bird Lover 

from his frantic efforts to escape a prison all too 
small, all too wicked, in its confinement of the 
royal prisoner! 

"T'chip! Tchip!" With his own gay note 
I tried to soothe him, but, beside himself with 
fear, it was impossible he should recognize a 
friend, and, like a sobbing child, could not stop 
the hoarse, choking notes that crowded from his 
throat — notes of such anguish as I had never, in 
many years of bird-work, been unfortunate enough 
to hear! 

With my heart beating in my throat, I looked 
helplessly on, watching him flutter, and fly, and 
strike his panting red breast against the imprison- 
ing wires, knowing nothing just then of the laws 
of that State concerning "The Little Brothers," of 
St. Francis. 

Came, then, to me her hands full of primroses, 
this erstwhile messenger of God. Primroses — 
magic flower of allurement, destined for the green 
earth-bed of one much loved. I wonder if what 
followed on this flower-quest, made for that one, 
in Paradise, a single day "that is as a thousand 
years" — a single day one degree happier? 

"How do you happen to have a red-bird 
caged?" in smoothest tones of conciliation I asked 
the savage-looking old lady of the garden. 

"Well, he flew into the greenhouse after the 
flowers, and I just caught him with my hands and 



A Leading of Providence 15 

shut him up," she exulted. "I had another one a 
few years ago and I sold him for five dollars !" 

My Primrose lady stood aghast, while I stam- 
mered, and stuttered, "It's wicked to shut up such 
a bird! I will buy him and set him free!" And 
I emptied my purse before her. 

"Well — he don't go for that!" was the con- 
temptuous answer, "I've already had an offer of 
three dollars from the newsboy!" 

Unbelievable, this, so I demanded: "How long 
has he been in that cage?" 

"Since yesterday, and he ain't et a thing er 
drank!" 

She fingered my pence in disgust and raised her 
price above the newsboy's offer. Would not free 
him for less — so, we left — more shame to us. 

What was he to me — that scarlet-winged song- 
ster? Why should I care ? 

I'll tell you. My first glimpse of his distress, 
and his pitiful notes waked a train of joyous 
memories. Pictures in as endless succession as the 
days of recurring seasons came before my eyes of 
a white-capped, snowy haired mother befriending 
all the birds of the air — not "preaching" to them 
as the good friar of Assisi, but sharing her every 
crumb with the feathered folk who came not at 
her call, but at very first sight of her at breakfast 
in the vine-shaded porch, fighting for place on 
her tray, and snatching up the crumbs as uncon- 



1 6 Quests of a Bird hover 

cernedly as you could imagine; cardinals, always, 
even tamer than the other birds, and in good time 
their babies with them — cardinals all day, and 
every day; cardinals nesting on the porch; building 
in the honeysuckles for her especial benefit; car- 
dinals joyously whistling about the house night 
and day; small wonder I could not sleep that night 
: — for thought of one of her friends a prisoner! 
Had she not been — in a way — a prisoner herself? 
Imprisoned in a lovely old house it is true, tied 
mostly to her chair, and living truly,- — in that 
chair, from dawn to dark, out under a leafy green- 
ness for years, with the birds her companions, as 
fearless of her gentle self as if she were one of 
them. Thus the time went by — birds, bees, 
flowers, a softly stepping of lovely old age into 
heavenly — not mansions (it couldn't be) — but 
gardens — she so loved them! Among all the 
crowd of feathered folk who so missed her, so 
mourned her not one was so faithful as the darling 
cardinals, the memory of whose questing for her 
in that long gone April time yet evoked my tears. 
I rose with the dawn determined to do some- 
thing, in some way, to not alone rescue the car- 
dinal in question, but, also, to prevent the capture 
of other cardinals. My urgent call to "K. S. 
U." on the telephone was answered by a certain 
University bird-man who assured me "There is 
no law to fit the case." Another declared, "There 



A Leading of Providence 17 

is a law"; another bade me "Bluff it out and free 
the bird at any price I" 

So much for men-folk. 

Then I bethought me of a courageous little 
"Humane Society" friend, and I "hitched" up 
old "Riley" and hurried away to interview her. 
My story was as a match set to straw, and on fire 
with indignation she consulted a learned Judge, 
he pointed out the law, armed her with a pon- 
derous tome, and sent us on our way rejoicing. 
The evening previous on our homeward journey, 
we had gone to the Mayor, who approved our 
action, but said we must go to Topeka, the 
Capital, and get a writ — (whatever that may 
be!) and a lot of "blue-tape" must be cut ere 
anything could be done. 

Meanwhile the bird would die — as such deaths 
had occurred after but two hours of confinement ! 

A Legislator said: "There is no law to free 
that bird. The bird is the property of the woman 
who captured him. It's a shame, but you can't 
touch him!" So much for one who makes the 
laws. 

But "She of the Tender Heart," nothing 
daunted, tucked the fat law-book under her arm, 
and "Riley" carried us back to the Place of An- 
guish. My proposition was (for I sure was afraid 
of the old lady), "Let me buy the bird, and then 
you read the law to her," hoping to get out of the 



1 8 Quests of a Bird Lover 

way before the storm broke. We found the bird 
still alive, and his captor amazed at our return. 

"Will you sell me the bird for a silver dollar?" 
I asked, though I had come with a blank check. 
The opulent newsboy had evidently not appeared 
and should the nearly exhausted cardinal die on 
her hands she would be at a total loss; so, with 
a bad grace, she accepted my offer. 

Into the cage went a careless hand, roughly 
dragging out the little prisoner, whose scream of 
fear was echoed in the scream of a wee child who 
clung about the Flower-woman's knees crying out 
in terror at the bird's suffering. 

"She of the Tender Heart," fortified by her 
law-book, stood scarlet with wrath and tearful 
with sympathy, and when I had made my escape 
to the out-of-doors with the now quiet cardinal 
safely cuddled in the gloom of my wicker basket, 
the "Tender-Hearted" but the "Firm" laid down 
the law covering song-birds as it was to be read 
in the Statutes of Kansas, ending with, "We'll 
let you off this time, but if we ever catch you again 
caging a song-bird, you will be prosecuted to the 
full extent of the 'LAW.' " 

'Twas a joyful home-coming! Even lop-eared 
"Riley" shared our enthusiasm and brought us 
gaily clattering down the main street of the little 
city. 

The old Judge, stately of mien, courteous of 



A Leading of Providence 19 

manner, descended his stone steps to receive his 
law-book, to peep into our basket, and to announce 
in ardent tones, "The pen, madam, is mightier 
than the sword!" — an endorsement I was heartily 
glad of, for "She of the Tender Heart" does not 
temper justice with mercy, and in our interview 
with the Flower-lady I had expected, every instant, 
to hear her exclaim, with Alice's Queen: "Off 
with her head!" 

The Legislator, suave, politic, hurried from his 
office crying, "Did you get him?" and the vener- 
able, white-haired Mayor, laughing, delighted, 
stumped across the street with his cane, "Well, 
well, well, well ! That's good! Let me see him." 

The occupant of our willow-basket acquitted 
himself gallantly. As man after man peeped in at 
him, he greeted each with his optimistic note, 
"T'chap! T'chip!" 

Out to the beautiful "Sunnyside" we carried 
him, up under the big elms to the south porch. 
There, in the golden light of a dropping sun we 
opened wide our basket. Absolutely still sat the 
little prisoner. "T'chip! T'chip!" 

"She of the Tender Heart" baptized the bird 
with happy tears, and I of the Accusing Con- 
science, laying my hand softly upon him, said, 
"Because of that 'Friend of the Birds' who loved 
you, old fellow, you are going to have a beautiful 
time" and I lifted him out, opened wide my hand, 



20 Quests of a Bird Lover 

and, without a tremor of fear, he flew into a 
little peach-tree directly in front of us. He preened 
himself with utmost nonchalance, shook out his 
feathers, and, in wide flight, rose on glad wings 
to the highest elm-tree top, and sang, and sang, 
and sang! 

Did our cardinal win him a wife, and build in 
the trumpet- vine? 

Perhaps — who knows? Or did he tempt the 
Providence that had befriended him and go wing- 
ing his way over the river to old home scenes? 
Who can tell? A cardinal did build that summer, 
in the trumpet-vine, and I like to think that it was 
an act of gratitude. 



THE ALIENS 

"But His well and right 
Safest you will find — 
That the out of sight 
Should be out of mind." 

Came to me a call over the telephone : 

"Two birds here in a box for you ! Just came 
in from Montana!" 

Magpies! Come at last! My heart beat fast 
at prospect of two birds in our silent house — not 
only beautiful to look at, but who would hold me 
in cheerful converse ! 

Away from the haunts of man, their language 
would, naturally, not be ornate with profanity. 
"Old Maria," a relic of "Quantrell" times, 
promptly told me of a twelve-year caged magpie 
of her acquaintance. 

"Miss Jinny," she said, "de way dat bird swah 
— um-umph ! He jes a-cussin' awful ! But he dun 
stop his foolin' fo' me ! Yaas 'urn ! I sez to him 
one day, 'Look a'hyehf Yo' bettah quit dat kin' 
o' talk! Ef yo' got de sense to say dem words, 
den yo' got de sense to know what yo' sayin' ! an', 
o' cose, yo' got de sense to know bettah! Now 

21 



22 Quests of a Bird hover 

yo' bettah jes stop dat cussin' ! An' he nevah 
swah one word befo' me — nevah, no mo' ! Yaas 
'urn!" 

Naturally magpies became of even more in- 
terest to me. 

Such a small box as it proved to be to have car- 
ried two young birds half way across the Con- 
tinent, and how the little prisoners chattered of 
the exigencies of travel when I peered through 
the slatted cover! Unattractive enough they 
looked, poor things ! So cramped, so confined, 
so dirty! But when I took them home, and 
freed them, their joy at such roomy quarters was 
reward enough for the sacrifice of our guest- 
chamber, for I emptied it of all things but window 
shades. 

I hunted up two long, gnarly appletree sticks 
for perches; I supplied them with a large box of 
gravel and sand ; and I gave to them, for purposes 
of bathing, a huge milk-pan of water. This 
latter both birds fought shy of until I plunged 
them in with my own hands; then, as I loosed 
them, they repeated, voluntarily, the ablution, 
again and yet again trailing their bedraggled 
tails through the bath. 

Ever so long I had wanted to study a magpie. 
Ever so long had my young friends out on "Deer- 
field Ranch" in Montana kept an eye open for 
the capture of a bird, and magpies are among the 



The Aliens 23 

most difficult of wild birds to secure. A certain 
curator of a prominent museum in the East has, 
this year, spent months among the Bad Lands 
of Montana in getting a few specimens only. The 
bird is swift of flight and sails through the air 
like a ship — its wings for sails — is very wary, and 
wildest of "our little brothers of the air," and 
the capture of the two which came to me had in- 
volved much time and hard work, and I ap- 
preciated them accordingly. 

The magpie lays from four to six eggs, of a 
grayish color and much speckled. Four young- 
sters had flown before my friend raided the home- 
stead and secured the two remaining birds, not, 
however, without a hard fight with the old birds, 
whose weapons — bills that seemed made of box- 
wood — were not to be carelessly encountered. 

The nest was in a dead cedar, high up on the 
hillside of a coulee, with "greasewood" growing 
thickly, and with only range-cattle and coyotes 
to witness their isolated home-making. The nest 
hung high, twelve feet from the earth, the dense 
greenness of the other cedars making a splendid 
background, and the blue berries of the grease- 
wood shining out below like jewels, while the pink 
of wild roses glowed against beds of fern moss 
that covered warmly the roots of the trees. Had 
they an idea of the beauty of the location, think 
you, when they selected it? The nest was an 



24 Quests of a Bird Lover 

awkward affair, made of bullberry twigs, many of 
them three inches around, very thorny and awk- 
ward to carry, and showed the powerfulness of 
their beaks. Fully four feet across, clumsily made, 
the opening was comparatively small, and the 
lining was of mud plastered in fashion of a robin's 
nest. The twigs they used are broken off by cattle 
rubbing against them. 

Being caught and kept, for a time, caged and 
hung out of doors in a small grove on the ranch, 
the unwonted freedom of a large room mystified 
the two travelers amazingly! They had tasted 
no freedom, you understand, and seen nothing of 
the world except as it looked from their aerial 
home, and an express car, with the exception of a 
few excursions when the male bird broke bonds 
and fled from his cage into the tree tops, where 
only the calling of his "sister" kept him in the 
vicinity, until, after much trouble, he was recap- 
tured. 

On June 29th the birds were caught, and they 
reached me in August. I had been warned that 
they were tricky and would slip out of captivity 
at the slightest chance. But far from showing any 
desire to fly out, they were the wariest things ima- 
ginable when I left open the door into the hall. If 
shy of folk in the bigness of the woods, they were 
not "shy" of me at all in the room. No sooner 



The Aliens 25 

were they dry from their bath than they began 
a minute inspection of their new quarters, com- 
menting, meanwhile, in tones far from compli- 
mentary. They walked boldly to the windows 
and gazed into the tree tops that tapped against 
the panes (the windows reaching to the floor). 
They hopped upon the sill and pried into every 
cranny; they pecked at the closed doors; they 
scrambled along the perches, twitching off every 
dead leaf; they slid along the top of rolled shades 
and peered down behind them; they descended to 
the floor and gayly made the gravel fly like rain; 
they tweaked the oil-cloth on which stood their 
bath, and left not an inch of it uninspected be- 
neath; then they turned their attention to me, 
sitting in the middle of the floor, on my lap a plate 
of scrambled eggs — (and it took all our forty- 
nine hens to lay one egg a day, mind you!) and 
hurried frantically over to see what manner of 
creature I might be ! Scrambled egg was the 
daily diet of these epicures on "Deerfield Ranch," 
and well they knew its color ! But a "womanf oik" 
sharing their cage — that was a new departure ! 

Around, and around, and around me they 
walked, each circling bringing them nearer, and 
chattering like a — well, like magpies do chatter, 
incessantly, loudly, imperatively, scolding, ha- 
ranguing, questioning, making a furtive grab at 



26 Quests of a Bird Lover 

the scrambled egg to which I was inviting them 
with coaxing tones ! "Come on ! come on ! and get 
something to eat. Come on! Come on!" 

The first day they would only eat when I left 
the food in the middle of the floor. The second 
day they partook of it when I placed the plate 
by my side, but always with mandates to me, 
and wondering squawks. But on the third day 
they came hastily to me and picked at the egg 
when I held out the plate on my hand. There- 
after they would stand by my side, or even venture 
onto my knee, and eat greedily from the plate in 
my lap. "Maria's" caged magpie had been fierce 
and snapped at every one, having been subject to 
much teasing — these birds, positively, seemed to 
know I meant well from the start — and trusted 
me accordingly. 

They seemed to be the least wild and the quick- 
est to make acquaintance of any bird I had known. 

I fell into the habit of saying as I entered, 
"What? Are you waiting for me?" and in "no 
time" they caught the words — "What? What?" 
"What, what, what?" greeted me instantly I 
lifted the latch, and, I do believe, if I had kept 
them a sufficient length of time, they would have 
said, "What? What? What you got this morn- 
ing?" 

Omelet and scrambled egg was the "chief of 
their diet," but corn bread, fruit of any kind, 



The Aliens 27 

meat, and old bones to pick all came into their 
daily living. In winter time they tear up huge 
nests of hornets and devour the builders with 
gusto ! Presumably the cold has numbed the hor- 
nets. I fed them morning and evening, leaving 
always a bowl of food for their "between meals," 
but I found them light eaters. 

Most beautiful birds, their black plumage 
showing lights of purple, violet, and green, while 
the snowy whiteness of their "vests," the white 
of their underwings and tails — long graceful ap- 
pendages — gave them an air of being always 
gotten up for a party! Their length was just 
seventeen and one-half inches from tip of beak to 
the end of their tails. 

Early in the morning they were "up and doing," 
I assure you. Pound, pound, pound, just over 
my head when dawn began to break. Want to 
know their occupation? Boring holes in the bare 
floor and jamming into them round pearl buttons ! 
I would call up to them — "Be still! Be still, 
Jack!" (for I had named them Jack and Jill.) 
"You will wake the Master !" A few moments of 
profound silence, then came in loud, unearthly 
tones, "What? What? What?" After hearing 
this in endless repetition, I simply had to run up 
stairs, even at dawn, for they were positively so 
attractive I could not help it. Every day de- 
veloped new traits, and, in such young birds, it 



28 Quests of a Bird Lover 

was an interesting study to see how quickly in- 
herited traits of the whole magpie race showed 
themselves. They had never had a plaything 
given to them before — but they seized upon the 
first button I threw and rushed frantically away 
to hide it, thrusting it under the papers on the 
floor — until they could "excavate" the boards. 

If I had not furnished them promptly with but- 
tons, spools, a tiny round mirror, keys, crocheted 
toilet mats (that they dragged around in delight) 
and what not, I feel sure not a grain of plastering 
would be on the walls this day. The instant I 
tossed on the floor a new object, that instant they 
pounced upon it, hurried around the room at 
lightning speed seeking a place to store it. 
Various excavations in the floor held buttons. 
Between the ropes and the window sashes, also, 
buttons went rattling down, and soon not a win- 
dow would go up without a creaking protest, if, 
indeed, it would go up at all! The wall paper 
came away readily under their vigorous peeling, 
but I found the birds never ill-natured, never ugly 
in any way. Inquisitive to a crazy degree, yes, 
but friendly as might be with me and the "culled 
help !" At night they roosted upon the apple tree 
boughs, but if they did not find place there before 
darkness fell, they seemed to have no sense of 
direction, or were not able to see in the dark. 

Time and again I have gone up at night to find 



The Aliens 29 

"Jill" (she seemed ever the less quick of the two) 
huddled on top of the middle sash of the window, 
or forlornly perched on the window sill. The 
first time, I caught her and put her on the roost, 
but she fluttered so that on other occasions I 
lighted a lantern, and setting it in the middle of 
the floor, sat down myself beside it and watched 
her until of her own will she found the perch and 
went happily to sleep snuggled close up beside her 
"Jack." 

Soon, I left the door open into the hallway, 
and shortly the two birds would run to the door 
and peer out, but it took many days ere they ven- 
tured outside it. Then it was for only a few 
moments at a time. At any step but mine they 
would dodge back into their room, seeming to feel 
safe within familiar walls. Later, they walked 
down stairs with the stiffness and precision of one 
"on drill." They never ventured into the lower 
rooms, however, seemed afraid of strange places, 
but would stand at the hall screen door and chat 
with "Jim," the huge Langshan rooster, by the 
half hour. His height and the size of his feet 
seemed ever a source of excited wonder to the two 
birds, and while "Jim" stared down at them and 
cocked his red eye wickedly, the two magpies 
trailed back and forth and chattered wildly, giving 
him "Hail" and "Farewell" with the only word 
in their vocabulary— "What? What? What? 



30 Quests of a Bird Lover 

What?" It was a sight to provoke laughter in 
men and gods ! You may think when they wished 
to go upstairs that they flew! Not so! They 
would hop onto the first step and hurry to and 
from the banisters and wall again and again. 
Then they would stoop low and hop to the next 
step and so on to the top of the flight, where they 
would scurry into their own door at lightning 
speed — glad to be back in familiar quarters ! 

Left alone in the house, the birds chattered al- 
most without ceasing. They seemed to want com- 
panionship, to hear something "doing"; but, in- 
stantly I opened the outside door, profound silence 
fell. Then, when my feet began to ascend the 
stair, I could hear the birds running to the door, 
and when I touched the latch — "What? What?" 
in sepulchral tones of welcome, for, indeed, their 
voices sounded all the varied tones of emotion — 
anger, joy, content, curiosity, fear. 

Their favorite perch when I entered was on 
top of the opened door, and along it they would 
run, from end to end, following my hand with 
some dainty for them. They were like two chil- 
dren in the house, and when I took my place on 
the floor would come instantly running up to see 
what new plaything I had brought them. A 
marble, a bullet, a button, anything small and 
hard, that would roll, was their main delight, and 
they would chase it round and round like kittens, 



The Aliens 3 1 

fighting like cats over a certain one both might 
happen to fancy ! 

But, alackaday ! When one begins to love any- 
thing too much in this queer old world one must, 
naturally, resign it ! Every time I went into the 
room and watched those caged, but far from un- 
happy, creatures, studying the waving green 
boughs that sunnily swayed just beyond the glass, 
my heart smote me ! Such a big beautiful world 
of out-of-doors, and those two who would so 
adorn it, so enjoy it, caught between four walls! 
It was too much for me, and so, on a day I called 
the curator of Kansas University. "Where can I 
safely free my magpies?" Not in our beautiful 
"Sunnyside" trees, nor yet near the park — quickly 
they would be captured or killed. "Down to the 
timber line," he said, "follow me this afternoon 
when I go hunting." 

So I laid my hand on my trusting birds, I 
caged them once more in their traveling box, I 
baked a fine "corn pone," and I scrambled the last 
lay of the combined forty-nine hens, I hitched up 
old "Riley," and with my "culled" maid, I jour- 
neyed sadly southward with my exiles. Over 
roughest of untraveled roads, down below "Blue 
Mound," far, far away over wide fields of pur- 
pling alfalfa into the depth of lonely woods, we 
journeyed, two miles or more from any house, 
and eight miles from home, and there we alighted 



32 Quests of a Bird hover 

and amid the greenness of "Copperhead Hollow" 
I set down the box. I talked long to my two dear 
feathered friends, who seemed almost human in 
their speech and action, then I broke the slats, 
and said — "It is certainly going to be mighty nice 
for you out here among these splendid cotton- 
woods, but I — ah, I hate to let you go ! Come on, 
come on out !" I coaxed. They hesitated but a 
second, then out sailed "Jack," pioneer, trying 
his wide wings at last in the open, and with one 
long curve landed close to the sky! "Jill" was 
slower, but followed him at the gentle sound of 
my voice, "Come along out!" My heart sank! 
Gone for good, they were ! But who could regret 
their fleeing! Not I, though I watched them with 
brimming eyes as, high up there among the green, 
they swung from branch to branch in wondering 
gladness! Then I crumbled the "corn-pone" on 
the fallen stone of a deserted cabin under the 
trees, I spread out the omelet, and I called, "Come 
down, come down a£id get some corn bread! 
Come down ! Come on down !" 

Both birds looked down, and instantly respond- 
ed, "What- What? What- What? What?" flitting 
down and down amongst the leaves and answering 
my every summons. 

But I had to leave them, and it did seem lone- 
some out there in the big woods, and I turned 
yearningly again, and yet again, "Good-night, 



The Aliens 33 

nothing will hurt you, good-night — Don't you be 
afraid! It will soon be morning, and then you 
will be glad," as they watched me, curiously, away. 
"What! What!" was the last sound I heard from 
the dimness of the woods. 

The silent house ! No querulous complaining 
as I neared it! No welcoming note when I went 
up the stair, no hurried steps to greet me — just 
the open door, and useless things ! You know 
what I did next, don't you? I sat down on the 
floor and cried! 

But that learned curator had said, "A tree is 
a tree to a bird and home is home to him in a tree 
anywhere !" But I knew better than that, for 
home is home to a bird in the same place year 
upon year, and human friends are the same to him 
on his yearly spring returning, but, as "Jack" and 
"Jill" were such youngsters, I could only hope 
they would not, amidst the verdure of Kansas 
woods, miss the wildness of Montana "coulees," 
for "Jack" and "Jill" are truly pioneers of their 
species in the "Sunflower State," and let us hope 
the winter will be kind to them, and their descend- 
ants will for long years make more lovely its 
flower-strewn prairies, and its woody hills. 

I never had opportunity of going again to 
"Copperhead Hollow" to see how the birds fared, 
but I telephoned to various farms about for I was 
as frantic with anxiety as if they had been babes in 



34 Quests of a Bird hover 

the wood in place of birds, and learned that my 
jolly little companions did miss me, for they had 
presented themselves in most friendly manner at 
various houses and graciously devoured "rations" 
from the hands of any giver. On a certain Sab- 
bath following the flights of my birds my tele- 
phone brought me a call from a farmer's wife, a 
stranger, living in the vicinity of "Copperhead 
Hollow." 

"Are you the lady who had them magpies?" 

"Oh yes," I eagerly answered, "Have you seen 
them?" 

"Sure ! them two birds come on my porch this 
mornin' a' walkin' right up to my door jes like 
folks ! They were that tame I fed 'em and they 
took the food out o' my hand! They stayed 
around all day and I seen 'em often, since, flyin' 
'roun' 'mong the trees !" 

"Oh won't you please feed them sometimes," 
I besought, "and make them some corn-pone?" 

"Sure, I will!" came answer and, then, I leaned 
my head against the telephone box and cried 
again ! 



THE DAISY FIELDS 

"Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune, 
I saw the ivhite daisies go down to the sea; 
A host in the sunshine, an army in June, 

The people God sends us to set our hearts free. 

The bobolink rallied them up from the dell, 
The oriole whistled them out of the wood, 

And all of their singing was ' Earth, it is well* 
And all of their dancing was 'Life, it is good.'" 

Our daisy field is far and away off from sand 
dunes. No sweet salt smell comes up from the sea 
calling the nodding flowers in rank and file to 
march down to its lapping borders. No indeed! 
but a day in our daisy field truly "sets the heart 
free" ; free of little humdrum things, free of strife, 
emulation, free of petty jealousies; free of heart- 
ache, lonesomeness and unrest, for the high warm 
wind delicately scented by rose-pink clover blows 
away all ugly narrowing thoughts, and leaves in 
its trail the knowledge that life is good, and there 
is just one thing to do in it, — Be glad, be glad, and 
be glad. 

For "eyeballs vexed and tired" this spacious 
daisy field provides a feast of loveliness that lasts 

35 



36 Quests of a Bird Lover 

one like Wordsworth daffodils, through the dark 
of hot sleepless nights to come, when, through 
heavy lids, cool white visions of that daisy patch, 
as it must then be lying under the friendliness of 
star-shine and 'neath the paling light of the moon 
in the dawning, each flower unfolding dew-wet, 
pearl-white petals, and uplifting their golden 
hearts in aspiration and in praise, as the "star-fed 
Bee, the great Sun-Bee" climbs over the hillcrest, 
for our daisy fields lie on rolling hillsides, acres 
upon acres upon acres. 

Torn up, plowed under, mowed down, they 
have sprung into life year upon year, they have 
spread and flourished, until, to-day, the fields are 
given over to them, and they run riot beneath the 
crooked fences to gossip with that careless road- 
side gypsy "Bouncing Bet." They even cross the 
lazy waters of the creek on wings of errant law- 
less winds bent on sowing mischief, and here, and 
here, in other meadows, and farther woodsy 
places gleam spots of white no larger than a 
pocket handkerchief. But the mischief's done. 
Next year you will see them wider spread, and 
daisy time is a dear time in this old village. 
Crowds of old folks, young folks, black folks, 
white folks, go out to admire, and worship, 
and "salaam," and be glad in the charming 
presence of the daisies, as, in Japan, slant-eyed 



The Daisy Fields 37 

heathen rejoice annually in long and leisurely 
worship of the cherry-trees in blossom time. 

Do not go by the winding road if you want to 
plunge into the heart of daisy land. Long, and 
weary looking, it trails its ribbony length, pallid 
with endless travel, up the hill shadelessly, and 
brings your dusty "Novena" to an end by cattle 
bars, which you climb over or take down accord- 
ing to your length of limb, and you tear up a few 
big-eyed daisies, or you cut with a dull-edged 
knife, and you gaze languidly across the expanse 
of chis restless silver-white sea of flowers. You 
wade among them but a few steps, you have seen 
the daisy field; it is not much, after all; you are 
hot and tired, you impatiently start back home un- 
der a sun umbrella, and curse the fate that led you 
by that delusive road. 

But! — leave the road after you cross the old 
white covered bridge (pronounced unsafe and 
laughed to scorn, poor faithful old thing, by the 
new structure of iron, concrete and steel, that 
flings itself insolently from shore to shore within 
a stone's throw of this old servant of the turn- 
pike). No matter! The new bridge stands all 
alone in its grandeur of piers, and rocky roadbed, 
but about the old friend all manner of posies 
attest their fidelity, and all manner of lacy ferns 
and embroidery of curly green mosses crowd 



38 Quests of a Bird hover 

every chink and cranny of the flagstone founda- 
tion. "Bouncing Bets" vainly shake out their 
crinkly petticoats, white, pink, in crowds of flower 
ladies that press closely to each bridge end, and 
tall, white sweet clover reaches up from below to 
the height of a man, and in the hot sun sends 
up its incense to the old veteran, the white 
bridge. 

Pinkest of pink-wild roses have traveled 
leisurely, through the years, atop of the snake 
fence until a long rosy hedge of sweet-brier 
reaches out from the woods, tossing up protesting 
hands because it cannot cross over, and, amidst 
the tangle sits a shy brown thrush, wary-eyed, half 
afraid to trust me, while in the old wooden arch 
above her, her mate sings and sings. Everything 
is "doing" in the neighborhod of the old bridge. 
Such a companionable old thing to the wilderness 
of the woods ! 

Shadowed in the twilit coolness of the old 
bridge, sparrows innumerable, and of innumerable 
kinds, are picking grain and grass seeds dropped 
benevolently from the creaking harvest loads, and 
a tiny bluebird flits through one of many holes to 
her rainproof quarters in the hollow of a high- 
arched rafter. Colonies of tiny brown wrens are 
rearing their broods aloft, "feathers and moss 
and a wisp of hay" point out the building sites, 



The Daisy Fields 39 

and, thus, amid song and perfume the old bridge 
is drowsing away its days. 

Turn to the left at the bridge end, and climb the 
age-old lichen-covered fence; stumble over plowed 
ground where the brown earth lies a-dream 'neath 
waves of shimmering heat; the breeze frolics 
blithely through your hair, the sky is so blue, 
dazed, bewildered, happy, wholly wrapped up in 
things about you, you amazedly bring up suddenly 
against a wire fence all a-bloom with the wild 
grape, and you find, unexpectedly, beyond it "one 
mo' ribber to cross," whose silvery stretch is 
alive with schools of minnows, and just — too — 
wide to go over dry-shod. What's the odds? 
Shed your shoes, ditto stockings, and wade in. 
The water is delightfully warm, the minnows nib- 
ble gaily at your gleaming toes; the sands are 
golden in the depths below, the little stones im- 
periously demand right of way, but in a froth of 
mirth, and bubbles and disdain the careless waves 
dash against them, over them and are gone, 
changed from mimic rapids into the stillness of a 
mountain pool, on whose surface sails an infinitesi- 
mal gossamer fleet, feathery fruitage from the 
cottonwood trees. Naturally your footgear drops 
from your shoulder just in the deepest place, but 
a little fishing brings them up, and the sun-baked 
ground will dry them on your feet (if you ever ex- 



40 Quests of a Bird hover 

pect to wear them again) ; and, also, there is a 
wide field of rosy clover to cross ere you reach the 
haunts of the daisies, that already lift themselves 
on the hillsides like mid-winter snow-drifts. 

More than knee high stands the clover, and 
with every swish of our skirts we brush out per- 
fume. Numberless meadow larks break into song, 
rising on every side, whirring before our wary 
feet, for we are mightily afraid lest we bring ruin 
to the skillfully wrought homes of these ground 
builders. Swinging on the swaying grasses of the 
fields, in early spring, were innumerable bobo- 
links. To-day but few have remained to nest 
here, — ground-made nests again. And we cannot 
find a one though we see the owners saucily a-tilt 
on tallest weeds. How pretty they are and how 
unusual ! They have such a demure, cosy look 
about them ! The male looks like a blackamoor, 
His face, its entire front of dull dead black, a 
real little chimney-sweep; but a twist of his active 
little head shows a buff cap and a broad white 
summer coat of linen, with white shoulder-straps. 
He continually tips back his head from the seed- 
eating he is so busy about on the low weeds, until 
it seems as though he were returning grateful 
thanks to the blue sky above him for the beautiful 
seed-time and for just being alive in the beautiful 
world. 

I stalk an especial one this afternoon, around 



The Daisy Fields 41 

and around, but he fears nothing, allowing me 
to come close, and sounding his soft cheery notes 
of "Twee? Twee?" and then u Twee, twee, twee?" 
as if questioning my vagaries. His brown mate 
is close hid in the grasses near to which he sings, 
and he has a funny habit of flying from the low 
twigs of the weeds down onto the ground where 
she is hidden. They fuss about busily for a little 
time, then up onto the seed stalk again he flies, 
not very high, quite near enough to whisper to 
her, and give reports of what's going on above. 
He repeats this action endlessly. At no time 
whatever have I heard him use the notes ac- 
credited to him, of "Bobolink, link, link." Always 
and only "Twee, twee? a pause — "Twee, twee, 
twee?" Among the demure bobolinks we miss to- 
day the note of color flaunted by the red-wing 
blackbirds that, in early spring, dashed about high 
in air over the fields where sojourned the bobo- 
links. Their shoulder straps were of brightest 
scarlet, and these blackbirds stand for beauty as 
much as the brilliant warblers that flit north in 
their wake. 

To-day where the sea of daisies breaks against 
the wood-line, I find a few only of the bobolinks, 
hovering where nests undoubtedly are in the dead 
grasses, but they must be of the second setting, 
for the time is July, and the first wooing of the 
birds does not tarry for summer months. 



42 Quests of a Bird Lover 

Climb the hill, then ; cannily remove a panel or 
two from the wood-and-wire fence (four different 
kinds of fences within a mile !) and creep through 
into the wealth of bloom. From the timber line 
the daisies crowd down to welcome you, a surging 
sea, breeze swept, changing from white to green, 
from green to white as it is tossed up and down 
by the urgence of the winds, and on its surface 
be-sprent with yellow stars. You may fall to your 
knees in the midst of them and pick and pick. 
You may give that up and sit flat upon the grass 
crushing numberless blossoms in your fall, and the 
daisies will sweep above your shoulders, and the 
harvest of posies you have picked leaves no gap. 
You wander aimlessly among the flowers, shaking 
out pollen with every step, trailing your finger- 
tips delicately over the restless petals, and the 
daisies bow, and bow, and bow before you, at 
your side, and close up in your wake. You have 
left no mark of your passing. The lightest wind 
ruffles the willing blossoms into rhythmic waves, 
that roll on as far as you can see, and they nod 
consentingly to the east, to the west, to the south ; 
they swing on long stems, they twist and turn 
about, and dance madly to the shrill piping of the 
coming storm, and in the welcome rain they 
mightily rejoice. Their heads swing low only to 
lift again and look about for hints of azure among 
the "thunderheads" whose shadows first gave 



The Daisy Fields 43 

warning of the tempest and turned their petals 
into gray; they shake themselves under the first 
sunbeam, take heart and begin the day all over 
in the knowledge that "life it is good," after all. 
Always just beyond where one is picking seem to 
be the largest flowers. 'Tis magic lure and leads 
over hill and hollow in all directions. 

Enchanted with this royal field of white and 
gold which summer has brought forth, thousands 
of gauzy wings, purple and brown, yellow, blue, 
white are all aflit. Butterfly Courtiers of high de- 
gree to the Princesses who curtsey, and dance and 
dance again. The little hills fold upon themselves, 
fold and unfold, and a dell leads by flowery way 
to an island of green trees, an oasis in this won- 
drous spread of flowers. 

The cattle crop the grass on the edge of fences 
that yet cannot stop the onward march of the 
daisy. No "wee crimson tipped flower" this, but 
a big, strong sturdy white bloom that will grace 
the fields for days and weeks, reproducing itself 
endlessly, all through the months of June and 

July. 

But, wandering in a daisy field with wondrous 
happenings all about us is a chancy thing. Un- 
seen eyes are watching us, unseen ears hear us, — 
the peevish chatter of the gray squirrel tells us 
so; and from near by a shout of laughter, a rat- 
tling chuckle proclaims what clowns we be, in the 



44 Quests of a Bird Lover 

opinion of the one who views us from the thicket. 
We pause in amaze and peer at the tangle of 
undergrowth in the woods. The tongue of him 
who jeers at us is by no means a soft one. It 
shouts, it whistles, it cries, it mocks all the birds of 
the air from the catbird's fretful call to the melo- 
dious notes of the gorgeous cardinal, who serenely 
whistles it down, and, as we hurry to find this bird 
of no name, he suddenly launches into the air, dis- 
closing his identity by the gorgeous yellow waist- 
coat he wears — the yellow-breasted chat, than 
whom no greater comedian is sheltered by the 
woods. 

Under a sky of steel blue the daisies are 
shutting. Twilight is falling across the meadows, 
but not gloom, for the night is softly irradiated 
from below, as from above, by the planetary sys- 
tem of the daisy fields, now drowsy white-capped 
buds responding to the light of the quiet stars. 
The cattle are lowing at the gates, gauzy-gray the 
mists drift over the lowlands, the hills have all 
gone to sleep, no faintest wind blows; the birds 
chant more and more slowly, and, the long day 
done we reluctantly set our feet homeward, ever 
turning to look wistfully back until twilight has 
changed to dark, and we tramp silently, happily, 
tiredly, with uplift of heart across the old white 
bridge. 



AMONG THE BERKSHIRES 

"Grasses entangled with shadows. 
Branches that sway overhead, 
Vistas down spangled meadows, 

And a brook with a noiseless tread" 

Across the road from "Orchard Nook" lives a 
very small woman who owns — a mountain! She 
owns "Haystack," and Haystack looms almost at 
her front door. I look at this small woman with 
deep respect. Fancy the weight on one's mind 
imposed by a mountain, — and its taxes ! My 
awe is not, however, tinged with envy. For the 
mountains frightened me. 

Declared the Dominie, "Well, you are a tender- 
foot;" Counseled I with myself, "I will lift 
up my eyes unto the hills, from whence" ought to 
"come my help." But it was quite useless. They 
appalled me with their vastness, — they shut me 
in, — they threatened me, these high, green hills ! 
They seemed falling on me. 

Shadow, and shade, and sunlight, and tall forest 
trees growing out aslant in desperate effort to 
reach the light — "the survival of the fittest." 
"No," I announced, "I do not like the mountains 

45 



46 Quests of a Bird Lover 

— they are all leaning this way. I am afraid of 
them." 

Green and gracious : mysterious, also, in slender 
forms of light-footed deer, who gazed at us in 
wide-eyed wonder from the borders of the lake; 
alive with red squirrel and chipmunk; full of 
glancing sunlight from the west — even thus, they 
menaced me, and only the testimony of a fairly 
good conscience prevented me from running away. 

Across the road behind our buggy sprang a doe, 
scarcely frightened, but skimming the stone wall 
like a bird, up, up the hill, and away, her plumy 
stump of a tail flashing "adieu," like the waving 
of a handkerchief. The second deer, for my 
hostess, in her seven years of dwelling among the 
hills. My first deer — after a residence of only 
two weeks. Judge of my luck! 

This sign of companionship in the wilder- 
ness comforted me, but yet, horizon and wide star- 
bejewelled sky had vanished with the sea I left 
behind me on the shores of good Cape Cod. 
What matter that the sun sailed from sight in a 
flood of palest green? or that rippling bands of 
red-gold filmed cloudily above the sea of light? 
or that the roseate hue spread and spread to 
farthest east, bedecking a sky of faint blue with 
rolls of diaphanous pink? or that the golden 
splendor died into gray only to blush once more 
in wondrous afterglow — the stark trees of the 



Among the Berkshires 47 

mountain tops a-row against the glory, the clouds 
above changing to ashes of rose? 

Beautiful? Yes. Stupendous? Yes. Mar- 
velous in their range on range of misty hills lap- 
ping and interlapping, folded softly one upon 
another — far, far away. But, comforting? Not 
to me. Helpful? No. 

Into the hills from the sea! The immensity 
of difference. "As news from a far country, so 
is water to a thirsty soul!" I wonder if that 
means — the sea? The restfulness that comes 
from the sight of many waters? It is health; it 
is strength; it is healing. The sea does every- 
thing, and we look on. Tired, discouraged, we 
cast ourselves on the shore of the sea, and our 
cares drift swiftly away on the ebbing tide. Out- 
stretching far, and far, opaline in ever changing 
tints, tireless in its recurrent surges; clamoring 
among the rocks in the wild assault of onrushing 
tide; whispering its apology as back and back it 
slides adown the shimmering sands, leaving toll 
of submarine life in every crystalline pool. Look- 
ing on the sea we think of the sky — its blueness, 
grayness, cloud-flecked or starlit, a world of glit- 
tering light — by night, by day; sea and sky, sky 
and sea. 

Drops the sun into the water, a ball of molten 
metal; up reaches shining fingers of rose color, 
touching here, and here, and here the ceaseless 



48 Quests of a Bird hover 

ripples into a path of fire, dancing, sparkling, dis- 
appearing, breaking forth anew and reaching to 
where sky and sea do meet. 

In afterglow the sky swims in gold, green, pink, 
crimson, purple, gray, darkness; and in the east 
the moon marking her course with a broad silver 
brush, and across it swing bat-like sails. 

Must one not be bred to the hills to love them? 
Heimweh — for the mountain-tops is among the 
weariest of "heart-sickness" when distance 
divides. 

The yellow-haired Norwegian lassie, our little 
maid, weeps for her mountains and rocky fiords. 
"Eugenie" — the cook sighs for the hill-country 
of France! "Francois" works and plans for a 
little farm among the Alps where, already, has 
preceded him with "les enfants," "ma femme — 
Mariette!" 

Cuddled in a hollow in the very heart of the 
woods on the flank of "Bald Mountain" lies a 
tiny cottage — a "cabin," we from the South would 
say. The tangled garden glows with asters, and 
from the small diamond-shaped panes peers an 
old, old face — the face of a woman of eighty- 
four — alone, content, serene, happy, with only 
birds and trees, and flowers, and the whispering 
companionship of the mountains. By choice she 
lives here, from an absorbing love of the hill- 
country. 



Among the Berkshires 49 

Thoreau scornfully sniffs, "The man (or 
woman?) who wants constant communion with 
his fellows through the postoffice has not heard 
from himself in a long time!" What rare dis- 
course, then, holds she with herself, this brave 
old lover of the hills ! 

Gazing at the mountains we think of them — 
not of the sky that arches over like a big, blue, 
inverted bowl. The tints and shades and colors 
of the forest — pine, birch — longlimbed, clean 
white trees, — maples and oaks, firs and aspens. 
There is no reflection of the kindly stars; scarce 
a gleam of moonlight glances into the black-green 
depths, and yet these mountains are full of marvel 
and of healing airs. 

Up, and up, and up climbs the twisting, turning 
road, fern bordered, laurel perfumed, under in- 
terlacing boughs — up and up it goes to "Moses' 
Mount" with its long vista of "Canaan Valley." 
Or up and up, over "Bald Mountain," until Mt. 
Everett's cloud-capped peak lifts its head high 
above the ranges. Blue, and blue are the long 
lines of hills, sun smitten in places, rainbow 
spanned in others as a shimmering mist spills it- 
self among the valleys. Four ranges of moun- 
tains lie in sight, and on their crags cling tiny 
villages like swallow-built nests. Above the many 
woodland voices among the mountains sounds 
always the running water of the brooks. Narrow, 



50 Quests of a Bird hover 

troutlike streams that fall, and fall, and fall un- 
seen often, but never unheard, full of busy, chat- 
tering gossip. Thus we came upon the "Mur- 
muring Maid." Springs this brooklet from high- 
est mountain-top, drip, dripping from granite 
crevices, ice-cold, crystal clear; creeps softly 
among the leaves — joins itself to other errant 
streams, slips among the shadows, down, and 
down, to fallow fields and sunlit meadows, where 
sweet-breathed cows come to drink. Murmurs 
this maid in musical tones — trills, and runs, and 
twinklings over its rocky bed — falling over shelv- 
ing with loud thanksgivings. All the sounds of 
summer are outsung by this "Murmuring Maid"; 
the cricket's churr, the locust's hum, the ceaseless 
reiteration of "Katy-did," the dizzy buzz of yel- 
low bees, ever above them is the cheerful note of 
the brook, insistent, eager, careless of sorrow, or 
woe, heartaches or joy, ever with a message of 
good cheer — "Be glad; be glad! be glad!" 

Climb the stone wall, its crannies green with 
ferns, break through barring branches, spring 
from rock to rock across the mimic rapids, push 
your way along its course in all the hidden curves 
among ferns, and daisies, and wild blue-flags, it's 
worth your while. This mountain brook will 
teach you everything of woodland ways. You, 
quietly resting among the ferns, may watch the 



Among the Berkshires 5 1 

birds come to drink ; the humming-birds, who rob 
the ferns of their downy sheath; the cat-bird, 
slipping among the bushes, and mocking those un- 
lucky enough to sing near him: the "Murmuring 
Maid" has secrets but will unbosom them all to 
one who loves her. 

Of the "piny woods" bordering the "Downs" 
can one tell their delights ! Soft foot-falls on the 
thick ruddy carpet of pine needles, a crowd of 
chick-a-dees chattering take you into communion, 
hopping about in interested curiosity, with many 
greetings of "Dee-dee, dee, dee!" 

Distinct on the warm brown carpet lies a mor- 
sel of lichened bark, — blue, brightest blue, the 
very tint of sky and bird-wing. The pine has 
flung it — and I pick it up in wonder — a piece of 
blue bark, unseen before — by me. How they 
gossip, whisperingly, these gray-green pines ! 
The sound of the sea is in their branches, the 
aromatic smells of Araby drift from them at 
every breeze; their canopy is a drop-curtain— 
before, beyond, and far away lie sunlit expanses 
of shining fields, and range on range of blue and 
misty mountains. 

There are fern-hollows among these deep, dark 
woods. "Fern parlors" — where the shade is 
densest a ghostly group of ferns — white, skeleton- 
like. Where the sun ever faintly flickers, green- 



52 Quests of a Bird Lover 

est of all things are these, delicate, curling, un- 
curling, spreading wide their dainty forms in 
shades innumerable and in numberless variety. 
For this is their "Homestead." 



OUT-OF-DOOR THINGS 

"The birds their rippling songs will sing 
And wooing minds their spices bring" 

Suppose you are trying to sew — when all the 
woods are calling, "Come!" You say firmly to 
yourself, "No, this rainy day is just the day for 
darning!" and you pile your lap with detested 
old stockings, you push your yarn through the 
needle's eye, and lo ! a flash of flame in the pine- 
tree's top ! Down goes your work, and away on 
the wings of a crowd of warblers fly your good 
intentions ! For that tantalizing flash was the 
golden breast of a Blackburnian Warbler ! 

"Of a warbler" do I say? In a twinkling the 
trees are ablaze with bits of color. Flit through 
them and away! Dear me, how the woods call! 
But the mists rise up, and rain comes down, and 
I lower my beauty-loving eyes from the tender 
green spring fringes of the pines to the prosy 
work of black socks; but the needle goes flag- 
ging^ 

Again there is stir in the pines and cedars. 
Away goes my work, and into play come my 
glasses — and that was only the beginning: for 

53 



54 Quests of a Bird Lover 

three happy weeks, "off and on," that crowd of 
warblers made merry outside our windows, and 
what they found to eat among the pine buds I 
could not conjecture. 

I give you the names of those in purple and 
gold of fine feathers upon whom we looked down 
from our airy windows, as often as we looked up, 
when they flitted to the tops above us — and it was 
a piece of dexterity to catch them with the glass, 
for their flight is so swift, so darting they change 
places with the same celerity and apparent incon- 
sequence as the bits of colored glass in a kaleido- 
scope ! 

Rainy days only add a gleam to their shining 
coats, and they are all in holiday attire for the 
courting season! The Blackburnian Warbler is 
most gorgeously dressed of all — golden orange 
his breast and throat, orange striped his crown, 
velvety black on back and wings, with markings 
of satiny white. The soon-to-be wife of his is 
dressed somewhat in fashion as a yellow-bird, 
duller of breast, and with dull black wings marked 
with white. 

Many are the black-polls, both male and fe- 
male ; a black-throated green warbler, pure white 
as to vestments, curiously yellow-marked on 
cheeks; pine warblers — demure little females in 
Quaker gray and white, while the male sports a 
yellow vest; a palm warbler, deep yellow of 



Out-of-Door Things $$ 

breast with sides chestnut spotted in fashion of a 
thrush; magnolia warblers — a many of these — 
lemon-yellow of breast, with yellow rump, white 
feathers in tail and wings, and one of the least 
timid of all this crowd that enlivened the spring 
days in our neighborhood. Myrtle warblers, 
Cape May warblers, Nashville warblers, and the 
common black and white warblers in crowds. All 
of these we identified day after day flitting about 
in our cedars and pines in the heart of the little 
village. I learned later it was unusual that such 
birds should come into a town, or dwell there so 
long. In any case, we had them, and not only 
that, but a few of them came to the bird-table on 
the porch roof to taste of "light-braid" scattered 
there ! 

Just now it is October — and, flashing about in 
the big maples that are shaking out branch ends 
in all shades of crimson and scarlet, these little 
birds of gay feather have again come to call and 
are winging their way South. It's always a sub- 
ject of indecision to me whether the birds care 
most for fair days, or days of rain; days when 
the trees drip moisture quietly and silently, and 
when you may stand for an hour in the thickets 
with these dainty warblers as busy about their 
business as the proverbial bee, picking, picking, 
into every conceivable cranny, seemingly oblivious 
of your presence, or confident you mean them no 



56 Quests of a Bird hover 

harm, and understand your affairs as they do 
theirs. 

A week ago, wandering up through the campus 
with umbrella closed, a "misty, moisty morning, 
when cloudy was the weather," a sudden hard 
pattering of apparent rainfall warned me to put 
up my shelter, which I did — but not a drop fell 
upon its cover ! I put out my hand — no moisture ! 
I put down my umbrella and turned from the path 
in among borders of blossoming wild asters that 
empurpled the underwood, and was instantly 
pelted with falling beechnuts ! 

Could anything but a snapdragon cast forth its 
seed with such force and celerity? They literally 
rained down, crisp, brown, popping from their 
cells, dead ripe. And what started them? A 
crowd of blackbirds, for once not bent on conver- 
sation, but banging away at the boughs with blows 
that sent down the nuts like hail. 

For days the woods have been astir with 
migrants. This morning, in the mist and rain, a 
whole bunch of birds is frolicking in the tall 
lilacs, in and out of the big brushy heap of syrin- 
gas, and tilting on the telephone lines that swing 
in the wind. Hot and dusty was yesterday — no 
birds. To-day, cool and damp, the feathered folk 
show with no uncertainty that soft rainy days 
are just as good to them in their season as days 
of sunshine. 



Out-of-Door Things 57 

A cardinal — resplendent! greedily eating the 
blue berries of the woodbine; black and white 
styles showing in warblers, and a young downy 
woodpecker; the russet browns pertaining to fall 
look freshly donned by the thrashers, and a dainty 
hermit thrush who balances himself eternally on 
telephone line ! The tufted titmouse, who really 
stays with us all winter, seems to play at migrat- 
ing, too, for he is a great "mixer," and you catch 
him in almost every crowd; phcebes and a wood 
pewee utter complaining notes, but the gathering 
is mostly a silent one but for the savage cry of 
the jay, who does not come amiss as a note in the 
color scheme. 

The roadsides are gay with bloom. Midsum- 
mer, with its sweet-brier, is the only thing that 
outvies the wood-ways of October. Yellow 
patches of feathery goldenrod; tall asters, white 
and lavender, are springing and nodding from 
beneath hedges, and all along the road, and one 
goes about sniffing here and sniffing there, in vain 
search for something in the crisp, perfumy air 
that we can not name ! And that reminds me of 
a day when I jogged on a "tipcart" through 
Louisiana woods, all sweet with spring life and 
bloom, when suddenly there floated on a cool stra- 
tum of air a strange, sweet smell. 

One may think he is familiar with the fragrance 
from every tree and shrub when lo ! in a moment 



58 Quests of a Bird Lover 

some elusive odor greets him — unrecognizable — 
and yet? 

On every gust of wind came to us the new smell, 
and we ventured in among thickets of laurel and 
wild jasmine to run unexpectedly across what we 
later learned was the flower o' the wild pink 
clematis, tangling itself in a rosy cloud over the 
decaying trunk of a water-oak. 

The charm of this flower is indescribable, for, 
though in a way all are similar, study it as long 
as you will, examine blossom after blossom, and 
no two of a thousand will you find exactly alike. 
Not only is it individual in this, but also in its 
rare perfume, and in the persistent freshness of 
its appearance. When, in the tropical heat, every 
flower in its neighborhood is a-wilt and hangs 
heavy-headed, half asleep, this strange pink 
clematis has the freshness of a dewy morning. 
It is called "plentiful" in the South, but in a 
twenty-mile ride you may, perhaps, come upon 
two or three of the plants — if you look sharp — 
not oftener. 

Spring, summer, autumn — not even winter is 
devoid of birds, bees, and beautiful out-of-door 
interests. I call to mind a sudden swarm of bees 
last summer in our Kansas garden. Busy was I 
"a-hangin' up the clo's," when a mighty, rushing 
sound as of thunder beat upon my ears. All 
around and about me came a multitude armed 



Out-of~Door Things 59 

with shining lances — winged with gauze — the old- 
fashioned thatched hive had yielded up a swarm ! 

Too late to run, so I stood quietly but in a 
panic of fear wondering if upon my devoted head 
would hang this myriad of honey-makers. But 
high above me, soaring high and higher, swept 
the bees, weaving in and out among themselves in 
dizzying swirls 'way up into the blue, and then, 
like a shimmering silken curtain, the host folded 
back upon itself — back and down — like a drop- 
ping sail — to wrap its tissue around and about the 
lowest branch of a pear tree directly by my side. 

The neighbors called, "Don't move! We'll 
send for old Terry ! The bees never touch him !" 
So, perforce, and because I was afraid to stir, I 
watched the marvel at arm's length range. 

Millions upon millions of bees formed the solid, 
ever humming mass, a big, brown, cone-shaped 
bunch that hung in the morning sunshine. What 
hurry, what scurry to get "old Terry" — as slow, 
himself, of movement as a — road engine, but, 
finally, across the pasture and over wire fences, 
hatless, coatless, nonchalant, came this old darky, 
who could handle the bees without gloves. 

We waited, yes — but he was a little too slow — 
and we watched the bees slowly melt away as 
snow melts in the sun ere "old Terry" reached 
the scene of action! The flitting began at the 
point of the cone. Two or three bees drifted 



60 Quests of a Bird Lover 

away into the air, then a few more, slowly, de- 
liberately, then more, then in hundreds they 
loosed themselves and slowly rose and, in less 
time than it takes to write it, the whole bunch 
wafted away over the fields, away and away! — 
to make a "bee-tree" probably for the untimely 
rifling of small boys, for of that swarm nothing 
ever was seen "no mo' " ! 

The big woods, even in the fall, are always full 
of interest, quiet though they seem, and a listen- 
ing ear catches more than melancholy note of 
bird: stirrings of leaf, low jarring tones of insect 
life, patterings of small feet, crunchings of nuts 
by the squirrels who sit aloft — and the eye, almost 
unwittingly, beholds, at short distance, the move- 
ment of falling leaves, the gentle upheaving of 
earth mold. Beneath are flat, velvet paws push- 
ing a passage for the blind way of the mole. A 
stamp of the heel, and the workman's tools are 
useless, for the slightest blow ends the groping 
life. But why should we? Debarred from gar- 
dens and lawns, here in the woods is room for 
everybody. 

Down in the Southern woods we came across a 
colony of ground nests — more than a hundred of 
them. This is the dwelling-place of the small 
white heron, and among the low, swampy nests 
we find eggs in every stage of development, much 



Out-of-Door Things 61 

as I have seen them (though not quite as mixed) 
in a sparrow's nest. 

This sparrow's nest had, first, been a squirrel's 
home in a treetop, but the lazy English invaders 
appropriated it to their own use. The winds of 
Heaven blew off the aforesaid "treetop," the nest 
was cast to the ground. It was a huge affair, 
showing community of life in sparrowdom. Eggs, 
perhaps just laid; eggs that were "pipping," eggs 
with young birds emerging from the shell, and a 
few naked, also a few half-fledged ones! A nest 
to be ashamed of for any bird, with its unclean- 
ness. Not an old bird came near the nest to "res- 
cue the perishing." Probably the "community" 
was already planning a new apartment house! 

Among the white heron's nests a few little blue 
herons were making war upon the colony as if 
fighting for place. And how the creatures of the 
wood do go, each about its own business, with 
little regard for "what other folks think!" Wit- 
ness an eight-foot 'gator, of which I was told, 
who lies, half in sun, half in shade (probably 
gorged) beneath a log in the slough. The old rot- 
ting log is crowded with nests, and, should this 
scaly body uprear itself, ruin and desolation would 
be the fate of the households above him ! On the 
edge of the bayou was what is, probably, her nest. 
It contains thirty-nine eggs — our charioteer said 



62 Quests of a Bird Lover 

he counted 'em! Big, soft-looking eggs, half- 
buried in the sand and mud! 

All that we learn of them is "darky lore"; 
that they will not "hatch" if put under a hen, for 
my friend's office-boy tried the trick on that often 
befooled fowl, who "mothered" her brood in ap- 
proved fashion, but, at the end of her natural 
incubation period, arose in wrath and left them! 
Picture her amazement had the brood material- 
ized! The legend that an alligator mother lies 
near her nest and defends it to the death is not 
true, for my friend has found several nests, and 
in every case was unable to "draw fire" from the 
old one. 

Young mockers, down in the Southland, I have 
heard practicing vocal gymnastics. They sound 
like babies learning to talk — soft, throaty, hesi- 
tating notes, but by mating time they have a love- 
song ready that grows each day — and night — in 
length and sweetness. 

Wild turkeys abound in Southern woods — birds 
of the earth, earthy! yet are they full of maneu- 
ver, and tricks, when they are discovered. 

On our left a careless-looking nest containing 
eleven eggs, the owner from home. Twenty feet 
further on we "flush" a turkey with her brood. 
Alarmed, angry, she shows fight. With a mighty 
ruffling of her feathers she flies toward us, halts, 



Out-of-Door Things 62 

and glares ! Like chaff before the wind the 
youngsters have blown into the underbrush ! 

We set our backs safely against a tree. The 
angry matron prepares for combat by first recon- 
noitering, drifting further and further away, and 
circling clear around us at a distance of fifty feet; 
the circle grows wider, and more wide, though her 
wildly troubled eye is never removed from us. 
Also, she never forgets to warn, unceasingly, her 
hidden brood. Nervously, and incessantly, she 
cries "Prut!" "Pr-r-rut!" "Prut!" which, being 
interpreted, means "Hush! Hush! Lie still! 
Hush!" to the youngsters, whose whereabouts 
she herself knows. 

With the mother in agony of attendance at our 
heels, we pry about in the thickets, and she, by 
growing excitement, finally points the way to the 
hiding-place. When we are "burning up," as the 
children say, and yet can not find, we drop among 
the high ferns, securely hidden. After careful 
pondering of matters comes my lady, close and 
closer, a-"tiptoe" to see "what's doing." 

"Prut? Prut?" inquiring, suspicious. Then she 
spies us! Into the air she sails, high over our 
heads, landing in a tree. Then we hide in the 
wild grapevine, and wait. Stealthily she returns, 
alights, and walks quite near to us — unseen. 

"Coast is clear!" was what she thought, for, 



64 Quests of a Bird Lover 

with exultant "Pr-r-rut," she haled from all direc- 
tions, in about thirty seconds, every single chick 
and child, gathered them round her in a precious 
bunch, counted them — I think — and bundled them 
off before her into places where stupid "humans" 
could not possibly follow, tossing back a note of 
victory over her shoulders ! 



A NIGHT IN THE OPEN 

If you have ever watched, through the long 
twilight, the going-to-bed of the birds, you know 
that never, by any chance, does a bird come 
quietly and settle himself down at the first im- 
pulse. He comes, and he goes. He flits in and 
out among the leaves where his nest may be, set- 
tling himself sentinel fashion as closely as pos- 
sible to the mate who covers the eggs or the 
young birds that are his; but he does not stay 
settled. The instant milord arrives, milady slips 
like a sprite from her nest — a little exercise of 
weary wings must be hers ere the long hours that 
will intervene before the dawn. Thus deserted, 
the male follows her to the edge of the garden — 
my garden — from which, evidently reprimanded, 
he flits back, a silent sentinel until the return 
of his partner, when away he darts on swift 
wings. 

Again and again this performance is repeated. 
It is purely an act of exercise or of joy to be on 
the wing, for as darkness falls there is no way of 
seeking provender, and nestlings themselves long 
since have gone to sleep. There is no such 

65 



66 Quests of a Bird Lover 

clamoring for food as, in the daytime, greets each 
return of the old ones. 

Principally, from my porch seat, I have watched 
the night-keeping habits of catbirds, blackbirds, 
thrushes and cardinals, who dwell among the 
vines and in shrubby places. After the lots have 
been drawn for "seats" — or perches, I should say 
— from the first homemaking of the proprietors 
until the last they keep them unmolested. 
Thrushes, catbirds, cardinals — even a robin 
(though sometimes he is quarrelsome) — I have 
found all nesting and sleeping in community of 
life, under the broad-spreading shelter of a patri- 
archal syringa bush. But year after year I won- 
dered why the umbrella trees held no single bird 
home. 

Last summer for the first time, to my delight 
a thrush made her home under the broad green 
leaves; but she held it with difficulty, and I then 
saw the reason why the umbrellas had been passed 
by. Watching the homemaking of my little guest 
in cinnamon color, I learned that umbrella trees 
are the finest roosting places imaginable, and the 
securest of shelter in sleepy time for every bird 
under the sun. Such quarrelings ! Such bustlings ! 
Such driving each other in and out with angry 
notes of war! Such surprise at sudden invasion 
of territory so peaceful by day as was endured 
by my homemakers at eventide; and such valor 



A Night in the Open 67 

as they showed in defending their hearthstone! 
Blackbirds, jays, robins, catbirds, one and all fled 
as if the witches were after them, for no matter 
how lightly they settled on the outer branches of 
the tree, instantly they were routed. So thick was 
the canopy of palmlike leaves that only by their 
tremulous motion could I trace the passage of the 
little brown bird to her nest. On the tip end of 
an outer branch she invariably alighted, entirely 
hidden by the foliage, and I, looking from the 
porch, would follow her progress by the green 
undulations as she struck branch after branch in 
her ascent. 

Forcibly ejected from one tree, the birds in 
this old garden of ours found shelter in a second 
umbrella tree on the south side of the house, and 
wrangled their way to rest each night of the sum- 
mer, disputing, scolding, flying in and out — but in 
the end hiding away in sleepy content all the long 
night through. 

February sent a first robin to my windowsill, 
where he established himself, dog-in-the-manger 
fashion, eating suet until satisfied and then cud- 
dling against the window pane, fighting angrily 
at the winter residents in feathers who had been 
guests at my board for months. I presume he felt 
warm, sheltered against the glass ; and was wait- 
ing until he once more had appetite, but his size, 
as well as his presumption, created consternation 



68 Quests of a Bird hover 

among all the birds who strung themselves along 
the wire fence — a hungry little "bread line" in 
feathers ! They were positively afraid of this 
arrogant fellow in brown and red ! Every single 
morning found him sitting on my sill. Many 
mornings, also, I opened my window, wrapped 
myself up in a shawl and sat beside him with my 
own breakfast, while he ate not alone what was 
his but the share of every other bird who flut- 
tered about in envy. 

My second real friend among the birds last 
year had a start in life far from propitious. I 
never saw his nest or his "folks." He was, ap- 
parently, born without relations of any kind, and 
had started out to forage for himself at a ten- 
der age. 

Scarcely had he tumbled out of some secure old 
nest to the top of the lichen-covered "snake fence" 
when the gray-green eyes of Marcus Aurelius 
sighted his pin-feather coat of blue. 

Proud of his skill, Marcus brought the little 
bird all aquiver, just as he brought mice, and 
crouched, growling, at the feet of my little neigh- 
bor across the way, expecting praise, but receiv- 
ing cuffings. That was Marcus's one fault — he 
would not distinguish birds from mice. 

The little neighbor, tearful and distressed, 
came across the road bringing the young fledg- 
ling to the "Bird Lady" out under the trees. 



A Night in the Open 69 

"He's all numb," she wept; "he's cold; he can't 
move." But he had only undergone a hard 
squeezing, so we warmed him with our hands and 
held him close and were soon rewarded with stir- 
rings of life. 

He opened upon us a pair of round, dazed 
black eyes, then the little sticks of legs began to 
twitch, the broad yellow mouth gaped widely, 
exactly as if he were awaking from a good nap, 
and soon we had in our hands a lively little bunch 
of feathers. 

How my small neighbor danced for joy! But 
she would not take him home again. "You take 
care of him ! You take care of him !" she begged. 
So I added him to my six motherless young rab- 
bits fed from a bottle and a wee chicken hatched 
at odd moments by a dozen odd hens from a nest 
egg, and fed him on cracker and milk when sup- 
pertime arrived. 

Pending the getting of my own supper, I hid 
him safely on the inside edge of a low-down hole 
in the twisted apple tree where some chickadees 
had hatched their brood. He could not fall out, 
neither could he fall in, and, as yet scarcely fit 
for effort of his own, I knew he was tolerably 
safe. When dark fell I put him among the long 
dewy grasses and left him. 

To my amazement he did not flutter away, but 
in the morning was stronger and had perched 



70 Quests of a Bird Lover 

nonchalantly on the high back of an old arm chair 
that stood out in the grass, looking a veritable 
owl with his tousled feathers and unblinking eyes. 
He made no resistance as I gathered him up for 
his breakfast, and promptly consumed a surpris- 
ing amount of cracker crumbs. 

Back on his chosen perch he complacently 
"viewed the landscape o'er," turning up an inquir- 
ing eye at the waving branches and, again, picking 
at his pin feathers as though thoughts of flight 
were buzzing in his brain. Hourly he gathered 
strength, venturing from chair to bench, from 
bench to chairback, to gather himself up, owl- 
fashion, and stare. 

By midafternoon he had hopped and fluttered 
as far as the drinking pan. Much he admired his 
own reflection in the water, flirting it about and 
over him until, leaning too far, he fell wholly into 
the pool! Deep for larger birds, for him it was 
a drowning proposition, and had I not been keep- 
ing an anxious eye open for his safety here would 
end his story. But I ran and fished him out, dried 
him as best I could and set him back on his safe 
old perch. "Every two hours feed!" — that's the 
rule for young babies, and I followed it with the 
fledgling, but at 5 o'clock, lo ! he had found a 
"foster mother." 

Two old jays came studying him curiously. He 
sat looking indifferently at them as they flew 



A Night in the Open 71 

about and then came down beside him, evidently 
saying, "Shall we or shall we not?" When I ap- 
proached with cracker and milk in hand it settled 
the question promptly, and instead of thanks for 
my charity such a berating as fell my way you 
never heard! 

No matter; I was satisfied. The baby had 
fallen in with relatives of his own kind, and in a 
trice, was gobbling down bits of earthworms with 
gusto. The meal ended, he fluttered on shaky 
wings after the old folks over into the pasture. 

In the evening my small neighbor came running 
across the lawn to make a call upon me among the 
trees. A wide mellow pathway of moonlight 
creeping nearer and nearer in the garden sud- 
denly revealed to us on the very tip end of a 
broken branch that lay on the grass a tiny, no- 
headed bird. The aimless little wanderer had 
drifted home again! How we scampered across 
the grass, softly and silently as might be, to greet 
him; and how we dropped down about him in an 
admiring ring, and laughed at him, and praised 
him, there alone, sound asleep, and said: "Brave 
boy, to be out here alone in the scary dark I" I laid 
a soft finger on his feathers and out popped his 
head from under his wing, while two staring black 
eyes opened roundly; but he did not "uncuddle" 
himself, remaining just as he was, a plump, serene 
little bunch of feathers. We talked to him, and 



72 Quests of a Bird Lover 

petted him, and occasionally patted him quite 
gently on the back. He never stirred nor winked, 
but looking rather bored, presently tucked his 
head down under his wing and left us to stare at 
him as long as we chose. 

For him night was the time to sleep, and he 
wasted none of it. I called upon him at 12, at 2, 
to find him immovable and soundly napping in the 
light of a moon that was like day. At earliest 
dawn he was still precisely as I had left him, all 
snuggled up in his feathers, not a sign of any 
head to him, and even when the birds were piping 
all about him he still slept on. 

But by daylight he was broad awake and mak- 
ing his toilet in great shape — picking at his few 
feathers and fluffing himself out to make the most 
of his scanty raiment, and standing first on one 
foot, then the other, as if a trifle in doubt as to 
their ability to "hop." 

Again, when I drew nearer, the foster mother 
swept through the air from some place of conceal- 
ment and notified him that I was not the person 
to be trusted — to follow her; and in short flights 
she finally carried him away, as lively looking a 
bird baby as one would hope to see — and quite 
as though he had not within two days escaped 
death by land and water and all the powers of 
darkness ! 

I waved him farewell as he hopped and flew 



A Night in the Open 73 

out of sight and got no reward for my pains ex- 
cept discourteous remarks from his parents. I 
have often wondered since if he were deaf and 
dumb; for not a sound or a chirp did he make 
during his entire visit. 



SNOW-TIME 

"Out of the sobs of the winter s storm 
The leaves of spring-time grow, 
And behind the drifts of the apple bloom 
Are drifts of whirling snow." 

When I arose and ran to my window to see 
what was doing among the birds, just before the 
sun came up this morning, the sky all pink and 
saffron above a world all silver-pink 'neath the 
marvel of the snow, — the feathered folk await 
on my "bird-board" fastened to the eastern win- 
dow-ledge would have moved to laughter other 
than bird-lovers. A row of damp beruffled 
tramps surlily awaiting rations ! 

Yesterday my boarders consumed half a loaf 
of bread, a quarter of a pound of crackers, a pint 
of sunflower seed, a lot of pecans, half an ear of 
popcorn, half an ear of yellow corn, two hand- 
fuls of peanuts, several large pieces of suet, some 
bits of "wienerwurst," and a little oatmeal! So, 
you may know that by night "the cupboard was 
bare." Feeling sure that long ere I was astir the 
birds would be on hand, at nine o'clock last eve- 
ning I swept the board clean of snow and laid out 

74 



Snow-Time 75 

their breakfast. In the night more snow fell, 
however, and hid all provisions from sight, and 
each "dive" made by any bird into the snow was 
like fishing in a "grab-bag" at a fair, or like the 
haphazard luck of the cats at Wood's Hole who 
sit a-row on the beach, and, as the tide sweeps to 
their feet, and recedes, each one puts out a paw 
and draws in a tiny fish, or does not draw it in — 
as the "fisherman's luck" may prove ! 

I thought of those patient cats when I saw that 
row of waiting birds ! Heading the line at one 
end of the board on its protecting edge sat a big 
red-bellied (Guinea) woodpecker. A soft, warm 
gray his breast, and his head a gleam of scarlet 
against the snow, even his eyes hold cheerful 
color of red. Next a-row came two bluejays in 
radiant coats of blue and white; then two spar- 
rows; then a Carolina wren, in cinnamon brown, 
who is wintering here, and makes free of my hos- 
pitality; crowded next — only the little white and 
black head of him, his shoulders and two tiny, 
desperately clutching feet showing above the 
board — was a small, downy woodpecker; and, 
"knee deep" in snow, stood the cardinal in as 
gay and brilliant color apparently as he shows 
in mating time. Seats were all taken! And the 
guests, much fluffed out as to feathers, and low 
cuddled down to keep their feet warm, each and 
every one making occasional dives into the snow 



76 Quests of a Bird hover 

for the prize of a grain of corn or a bit of suet. 

I watched, and laughed, and concluded it was 
time for me to help out the promise that U A11 
things are ours" if we "with patience wait for 
them," so I opened the window, again swept the 
board, and, with chickadees darting under my 
hands, and a titmouse eating crumbs as fast as I 
threw them, I spread anew the table, closely 
watched by a contingent arrived from the cedars 
and settled on the porch rail — the female cardinal, 
a few more sparrows, a golden-winged wood- 
pecker, and a "hairy." 

My bird-table is very primitive. It has no 
sheltering cover, it has no perching places, no old 
stumps at the corners with knot-holes to be ex- 
plored, or stuffed with nuts — not any of the 
things a bird-lover's board ought to have — but 
it's a good exponent of what can quickly be done 
in the way of attracting and helping to keep alive 
the feathered folk we all so love — or ought to. 

Let me see ! I think it is only about six weeks 
since I put out my bird-board. The winter has 
been so "open" the birds needed little help. Fully 
a week my board tempted before a bird ventured 
to it. Then one titmouse came — then two — then 
a crowd — then the chickadees; but never a spar- 
row at all, at all! Then I began to keep "tally" 
of the numbers, and the varieties, and in a short 
time my different "nationalities" had reached 



Snow-Time 77 

seven — then on the day before Christmas, the 
day of our first snow, they mounted to eleven. 
It takes the snow to rush the birds to folks' win- 
dow sills ! 

To-day, January 8th, the mercury four below 
zero, I congratulate myself that I (country- 
bound) went into the town yesterday "to get my 
poor birds a bone" (which they enjoy picking), 
and a loaf of bread — of which they have already, 
noontime, eaten half ! Sunflower seeds they love 
best of all. Next to that comes bread — soft, 
freshly baked bread — but let it get wet and 
"soggy," my birds will not touch it! It can just 
lie there, and dry and get hard, for all o' them! 
And, in compassion, I throw it away finally and 
give them things they do like. Perhaps I spoil 
them. Then they like birdseed, hemp seed, millet, 
etc. 

The cardinals for a long time glared askance at 
the common feeding board. Like true aristocrats, 
they would stand warily on the porch railing, or 
stay half hidden in the cedar and watch the mob 
at the board, neither complaining nor envying 
evidently, but just looking on and wondering 
whether or no they would or they could join the 
club. By the half hour he would sit on a branch 
nearly touching the porch, and watch the other 
birds. He was hungry — I knew it — so was she; 
and, as I looked, I often saw him gather from the 



78 Quests of a Bird Lover 

ground below the porch the "crumbs from the 
rich man's table," and retire to the roof of the 
back porch, outside my west window, and there 
regale himself. He sleeps in the thick cedar, does 
that cardinal, and his wife in the thicket of syringa 
bush below. The last thing at night I hear his 
sleepy "T'chip !" for he turns in early these short 
days, coming by 4:30 to his sleeping apartment, 
and the first thing in the dawn his coat of cardinal 
red is ablaze among the dark green of the 
branches. The big red-bellied woodpecker (such 
a beauty!) is the shyest of my birds. Sometimes 
I wonder is his hearing extraordinarily acute ! 
He cannot always see me when he comes, hidden 
behind the half transparent curtain hangings, but 
/ can see him ever turning his head, on the watch 
for trouble; and let me move the slightest in the 
world, by shadow or by sound he takes warning 
and is gone. 

Presently, however, the cardinal concludes he 
will join the circle, and daily, sometimes hourly, 
he stands, a thing of beauty and delight, on my 
bird-board, and cozily and comfortably eats his 
meals. No haste, no hurry about his movements; 
he eats with appetite and enjoyment, and his 
black mask and red bill are sometimes a-drip with 
suet, as, indeed, is shown on the faces of all the 
birds. 

The Carolina wren is my smallest guest, no 



Snow-Time 79 

whit afraid of others four times her size, and 
you'd be surprised to see how peaceable they all 
are in the stinging cold, and everything snow- 
covered. I put out water in saucers — it freezes 
"in no time" — but I see the birds eat the snow, 
so nature teaches them how to take care of them- 
selves after all. 

Still, they are not a silent crowd. Here is 
my list to-day, and, while I only name you the 
kinds, I assume that many birds of the different 
kinds visit the board — I'm afraid to say how 
many times a day. I will count for just one hour, 
and you can multiply that by six, say, six hours 
a day for feeding, and I can safely say, hardly 
a sparrow an hour. 

First, cardinals; then jays, red-bellied wood- 
peckers, downies, hairies, flickers, nut-hatches, tit- 
mice, Carolina wrens, juncoes, sparrows, and how 
eagerly I scan every brownish gray bird, hoping 
he may bear upon his wings the scarlet tips like 
bits of sealing-wax that would denote him to be 
the Bohemian waxwing. At home, in the old 
house, some years ago, the winter brought us 
many of these handsome fellows, but this year I 
have not seen one. 

I have heard of robins about on the outskirts 
of the town, but so far none has visited my board. 

Last year a fine plump robin made too free of 
my windowsill, showing pugilistic proclivities, 



80 Quests of a Bird Lover 

drove away every smaller bird who came near. 
He waxed fatter and fatter until his obesity 
caught the attention of passers-by who said, 
"Well, you've got the biggest robin I ever saw!" 

There is also a Swainson warbler who has been 
a rare guest among my birds this winter. He, 
too, is trying a Northern winter, and is as cozy 
and domestic-looking as our little house wren, 
whom I have forgotten to mention. 

As for notes and songs, we have had a little 
of these "off and on" all the late months, until 
the sudden drop of last week has silenced the 
song. The notes we still hear, even in snow-time. 
The jay's notes, harsh and strident, are not un- 
welcome; also the "T'chip" of the cardinal we 
hear every day, a promise of spring, — and a song 
of spring I have heard him whistle all through 
last December. 

The nut-hatch talks low — to himself apparently 
— commenting on ways and means with much 
cheerfulness, nonchalant to a degree ! And has 
little fear in his heart! He comes and goes 
freely as I put out his food, and wastes no time 
looking about him, or in the window to see if there 
is prospect of his being disturbed at his luncheon. 

The chickadees never lose their notes, and pipe 
to us as merrily in frost-time as in blossom-time — 
"Dee-dee-dee!" — flitting and darting about in 



Snow-Time 81 

jerky fashion, and with a great idea of their own 
importance in the scheme of things. 

The Guinea woodpeckers talk little, except to 
question fearfully — "Is-anyone-there ?" — or a 
protesting squawk from the porch rail if anyone 
is there in plain sight, thus preventing their stay. 
No other woodpecker hesitates, and their notes 
seem only notes of satisfaction or of thanks. 

The notes of the titmouse are cheery, like the 
cardinal's, somewhat, and he is an inveterate 
talker. 

As to what the different birds prefer as diet, 
I can hardly tell you. Every bird seems to try 
everything on the board in succession. The birds 
with the tiniest, most delicate feet take the nuts; 
cracked, but unshelled pecans; peanuts in the shell, 
walnuts unshelled, and, holding them beneath the 
small claws, hammer away at them for dear life, 
and I watch and wonder, time and again, that 
the sharp bill does not pierce the feet instead of 
invariably hitting the nut. I have seen the nut- 
hatches perch on the edge of the swinging half- 
shells of the cocoa-nuts, that I fill with cracked 
nuts, and flirt out of the nut the large shells one 
after another that they may find shelled fragments 
of meat that require no effort on their part to 
get! And I, astounded, cry out: "Well, of all 
things, that is the limit!" 



82 Quests of a Bird Lover 

The hour is up. I have been counting the 
guests at my board for one hour of the day — half 
past eleven to half past twelve. They number 
just eighty-one, and of five different varieties. 
This, too, at noon, when birds have been feeding 
all morning. 

Don't you think it seems worth while for each 
of us to feed the birds in winter? Not alone for 
their sake, but for ours? 

Who will take care of our fruit trees all sum- 
mer if we let them starve? Who will make gay 
the dark days of winter? Who will make glad 
all the "shut-ins"? 

Add to these birds one more, a most unusual 
winter guest, but one who lords it mightily over 
the home-folks — a big purple grackle ! 

Having arrived, from somewhere, he remained 
until full summertide, iridescent, splendid in the 
sun. Was I believed, do you think, when my 
story of "Snow-Time" reached uptown folks? 
Not a bit of it! Not until a-many came out to 
see! Among the many a certain "doubting 
Thomas" of clerical persuasion, who, convinced, 
looked disgustedly at my bird-board, and deliv- 
ered himself thus: 

"Well! I just wanted to see y and I wonder 
what it is in your old clap-trap (woman's car- 
pentry) "bird-table that brings such hordes of 
birds!" 



Snow-Time 83 

I don't know myself! But isn't there an old 
belief — if one thinks four-leaf clovers one finds 
them? So, perhaps, I "think" birds, and that 
brings them? 



WHAT'S IN THE MAKING OF A NEST? 

"Feathers and moss and a wisp of hay." 

If birds of different feathers have different 
habits, different notes, different song, how diversi- 
fied also are the materials of which they make 
their nests, and how interesting! Though tradi- 
tion tells us a robin delights in a seemly structure 
plastered with mud, why does she show from time 
to time not alone a tendency to decoration of that 
seemly structure, but also a laziness akin to the 
cow-bird (who makes no nest at all!), when she 
uses year upon year the same old home, adding 
superstructures of mud and twigs, until having 
reached overhanging eaves above her nest, she 
is positively compelled to make a new one close 
alongside, for the building site evidently suits her 
to a "T"? 

Nearby another robin (it may be one of the old 
robin's daughters) has selected a most unusual 
location — at the parting of an immense maple 
trunk into two huge arms. There is not room 
between them for any kind of a nest, so in the 
depression where the branches separate there 

84 



What's in the Making of a Nest? 85 

has milady established herself, the nest plastered 
against the side of the tree almost as a swallow 
builds — an open invitation to any passing school- 
boy, and not twelve feet from the ground ! 

Then, why do so many birds imitate one an- 
other in their selection of material, departing 
from old established custom to the exciting ex- 
perience of the new? 

Years ago we began experimenting with ma- 
terials for bird use, soon inducing the robins to 
progress from strings and cords to all manner of 
"carpet-rag" strips, and watched, with dismay, 
their dexterity in purloining dainty bits of laundry 
in the way of lace and handkerchiefs, from off 
the sunny grass, quite regardless of size, just so 
its weight was not too much to debar its carrying 
aloft by the power of brown wings! 

Our cardinals, using always, heretofore, twigs, 
rootlets, pieces of paper (the latter invariably, 
find your nest where you will), follow not the 
robins in the use of rags, but, with as beautiful 
ideas in their haughty heads as they are them- 
selves beautiful of feather, they choose with much 
daintiness the threads of snowy-white with which 
we draped the arbor hung with blossoming grape. 

Followed the cardinals, then, the orchard 
orioles, then the dashing dancjy in black and 
orange, milord Baltimore, whose wind-swung 
cradle was soon stitched together with long, 



86 Quests of a Bird Lover 

strong threads of cotton, and of rose-colored silks 
and flosses, and a many bird-feet tangled and un- 
tangled themselves so often in their attempts to 
put the new material into place, that I trembled 
in fear of a tragedy! 

Inherited tendencies are queer things, even in 
birds. Mourning doves built on the ground "once 
upon a time" (or their ancestry did), but have 
"kept up with the procession," and are now tree- 
builders. The first nest of our doves was built 
high in a tree ; the second the same season was al- 
ways lower, as if their interest flagged in the 
matter, and "any old place" would do when one 
was a little worn out with domestic cares. Or, as 
if, having tested our friendship and the dangers of 
the place, she felt more confidence in us. Usually 
her first home was in a "thorn tree" and its safe 
protection, for nothing but what went on wings 
could possibly molest. A poor excuse for a 
"home" is that structure of rootlets and twigs 
on which a dove lays her pearly eggs, and I was 
amazed at even her imitativeness when she car- 
ried from the ground a strip or two of rag for its 
further "furnishing" ! 

Convenience of material may (does) influence 
a bird in its selection, but there is small doubt that 
a love of beauty, and the skill of craftsmanship 
enters into their nest building. So much of the 



What's in the Making of a Nest? 87 

work is not for simple use — the lichened nest of 
the "ruby-throat" (only he doesn't make the nest, 
and his little wife is gray) ; gnat catchers also 
decorate the outside of their nest with lichens; 
others arrange a lining to the nest in form of 
beauty. 

Down South among palmettos, in live-oaks, 
among shrubby growth of all kinds, are to be 
found strangely-made nests, and many departures 
from conventional ways of bird-land. Hot as it is 
you will find the stuffy homes of woodpeckers 
provided with bits of raw cotten stolen from the 
"bolls." Even the "towhee," a ground building 
bird (for whom there may be some excuse as to 
dampness), amidst her bits of bark and leaves 
will thrust pieces of hemp (if near a levee) and 
shreddy bits of wool. 

Inherited tradition makes the hardy bluejay 
feel the necessity of heavy bed covering, and he 
quite often stuffs the crevices of his house (shackly 
old thing it is!) with wool or cotton. 

In a syringa bush yesterday a long white piece 
of cloth (at least a foot and a half in length) be- 
trayed the nest of a woodthrush holding three 
blue eggs. It was not the least use in the world, 
but there it hung, tucked in the side of the nest by 
the weakest attachment. The little cinnamon- 
colored owner, who u Tir-o-lee"ed to me in plain- 



88 Quests of a Bird hover 

tive questioning, surely thought it a thing of love- 
liness which she must possess — and I assured her 
I wouldn't tell! 

The shrike is said to line her nest with downy 
feathers of her victims — but once get a bad name 
and all sorts of stories are told; so don't let's be- 
lieve she is so heartless. 

The long gray Spanish moss mistily draping 
trees in the Southland is used in the nest-making 
of many birds that breed there. Last week, in a 
park, I ran across the nest of some imported 
duck (whose name eludes me just now), but who, 
with the usual sacrificing care for its young shown 
by every mother-bird, had plucked her breast clean 
of its snowy down, and made a nest of great 
beauty. As she sat eying me, and wondering at 
my insolence, the soft feathers fluffed up about 
her in rolls, and she was in the coziest place 
imaginable — a broad seat about five feet from 
the ground just where the great trunk of the tree 
divided and spread itself out in fine, huge-spread- 
ing branches. How she gets her young ones to 
the ground without accident I do not know, but 
presumably she carries them on her back. 

The family of chickadees that saw light (twi- 
light) in the apple tree last summer, in our gar- 
den, had been found, warmly brooded on a bed of 
down — soft feathers, pieces of fuzzy stuff that 
looked like plant material (got from I don't know 



What's in the Making of a Nest? 89 

where), while the mercury out-of-doors had 
ranged anywhere from 102 to 108 degrees! An- 
cestral tendencies again, when chickadees came 
down to us on the edge of the ice-wave. 

Baskett tells us of a "bird of the Sandwich Is- 
lands who, straying into the crater of volcanoes, 
builds her nest of spun glass, and so should not 
throw stones at anybody." Another bird we have 
all read of is said to have constructed her nest 
of fragments of mainsprings and hairsprings in 
watches. Needless to say it was a Swiss bird, and 
lived in the vicinity of factories. The pressure of 
circumstances again. 

When our cardinals built in our garden after 
they first used the thread, they invariably used it, 
for it was always forthcoming, you may be sure. 
When, by chance, they built at my neighbor's 
place they had no thread (there was none to 
have), so, as usual, twigs and sticks, and bits of 
paper (invariably) must serve the purpose. But 
let them return to us and without hesitation they 
again enthusiastically used the thread. 

At Wood's Hole, on Cape Cod, I found many 
rare nests. A crab-apple tree stood, a huge bou- 
quet of pink and perfume, beneath my window; 
below sang the blue sea; 'long shore, storm- 
tossed, lay a rippling line of sea-moss, sun- 
whitened. Why look further for material? So 
Madam Robin made good her foundation, amid 



90 Quests of a Bird Lover 

petals of apple-bloom, with treasures "cribbed" 
from the sand. She piled her chosen nook seem- 
ingly u cram full" — but when the rains came she 
managed to plant on top of the cushiony founda- 
tion a few stout sticks, which she plastered with 
mud, finishing it all with mossy adornment, and 
yet more: It is a beautiful moss (long, long strips 
of seaweed it really is), thinner than paper, and 
wavy through every line. 

On the road to "Falmouth Heights" we passed 
beneath trees holding other nests. Notwithstand- 
ing much ridicule by friends I insisted upon having 
them (it was in October), though they were far, 
far beyond my reach. 

"Drive this 'one hoss shay' under the tree," I 
said, reasonably, "and I'll borrow a rake from 
that house. I'll climb on the seat and reach it." 

Scandalous ! No Yankee, in conservative Yan- 
keeland, borrows of another Yankee unless they 
are introduced! But, with the manners of my 
country, the "wild and woolly West," I hailed a 
small boy in a garden, and besought him to "bring 
me a rake," which he did, very willingly, and I 
secured the nests, and left him the happier by a 
nickel or two ! 

One was the nest of a robin, a real prize in 
the way of bird architecture, for it was almost 
wholly made of sea-weed, a trifle of mud only for 
lining and to hold the young ones "in"; white 



What's in the Making of a Nest? 91 

crinkly sea-weed hung far below the bottom of the 
nest; sea-weed twined it round about; sea-weed 
capped its rim high, and if you can imagine this 
when it was "new" in early spring, snow-white, 
almost, you can see just how pretty it must have 
been. By October it was gray — light gray, whit- 
ish gray. 

The third nest was the nest of a white-eyed 
vireo, usually a clumsy structure of bark and 
leaves, but in this case was an exquisite bundle of 
white sea-weed (or moss), with sticks and strips 
of brown grape-vine bark mingled together with 
it; and the nest itself lay in the center of it all, 
such a "comfy" sort of place, such a soft bed 
for young birds ! A member of the Agassiz 
school of science on the Island of "Penikese" is 
yet living at Wood's Hole, a busy worker of these 
days for the "Smithsonian" at Washington, Cap- 
tain Vinal Edwards, who told me that on that 
Island, and on others, every bird which nests there 
makes its home often entirely of sea-weeds and 
mosses, "for it is very plentiful," he added, "and 
in fact, there is nothing else!" 



SOCRATES 

" Frowning, the owl in the oak complained him 
Sore, the song of the robin restrained him. 
Wrongly of slumber, rudely of rest" 

— Sidney Lanier. 

Socrates was in trouble — the result of not hav- 
ing kept to his long-established custom of sleeping 
in the daytime. In the late afternoon something 
had stirred him out of his leafy coverts in the dark 
wood — probably the robins — and thus rudely 
awakened, he had flopped heavily from tree to 
tree, foraging for his supper, and had finally 
landed in a maple adjacent to a thick woodbine, 
just then beginning to receive its evening tenants, 
the sparrows. In the golden-leaved maple he sat — 
great, brown Long-Eared Owl, much at his ease, 
but with watchful, blinking eyes that, half blind 
in the light, even yet saw quite enough to locate 
and pounce upon his prey when he got a chance. 

All owls have a way of fluffing out their 
feathers and making themselves appear as much 
as possible a part of the tree-trunk, and so long 
at a time will they remain motionless, it seems as 
if they themselves were deceived. 

92 



Socrates 93 

The small, active neighbors of Socrates were 
much disturbed by his sudden appearance, and 
with a curiosity that proved fatal to one of them, 
a brisk little chipping sparrow, they circled nearer 
and nearer to him in his immobility, until suddenly 
there was a swift plunge from out the maple and 
in a trice Socrates had captured a prize and was 
back to his perch, holding in his beak the injured 
bird, quickly assailed by the outraged horde, and 
his round, yellow eyes stared in amazement at his 
tormentors, as he slowly turned his head from 
side to side, the bird yet in his mouth. Socrates 
was vastly disconcerted and ruffled like an angry 
cat, glaring viciously at the assailants he dimly 
saw, but budging never an inch. Every moment 
we expected to see him fly away, but he evidently 
feared to try carrying his supper and was reluc- 
tant to leave it. For many minutes he endured all 
manner of insult from the sparrows, who flew in 
his face, tweaked his feathers, snapped at his eyes 
— bright and shining marks — and scolded and 
berated him soundly, until in sheer despair he 
dropped his prey to the ground beneath, and with 
an angry snap of his beak and a wailing "Hoo — 
hoo!" rose into the air and sailed away to the 
thick woods. 

That was the very last we saw of Socrates, 
but not by any means the first. In the early days 
of his youth, before he knew better than to go 



94 Quests of a Bird hover 

dozing about in the day-time within plain sight, 
an easy mark of two small boys, he had been 
captured by them along the bank of a creek, and 
presented to the writer. 

The morning of his advent in the household 
was full of pleasant surprises. He was interested 
in his new surroundings, and submitted fairly well 
to being held in the hand or on a finger and oc- 
casionally stroked, though at times he did snap 
savagely, little as he was — a very baby of an owl, 
downy and soft and gray, but with an inscrutable 
look in his yellow eyes which raised the question 
whether he had not come into existence with the 
Pyramids. 

In his youth he was more like a fuzzy chicken 
than anything else, and we were greatly surprised 
and delighted when as time went on he showed 
symptoms of having long ears. We could hardly 
believe we had really in our possession a Long- 
Eared Owl, a species much more rare about here 
than the Screech Owl or Barn Owl. 

When he was held in the hand he was com- 
paratively quiet, but once let him feel himself 
quite free, as he did when we perched him on an 
iron bracket, and away he would fly across the 
room, blindly alighting on anything or in any 
place, and leaving behind him a cyclonic track. 
A delicate china cup he shattered to atoms by 
alighting on its edge in his first flight. On his sec- 



Socrates 95 

ond tour of observation, down went a vase of 
Bohemian glass, and two tiny bisque figures 
danced gaily to the floor as. his clumsy wings 
brushed them en passant, he himself gazing at 
the ruin as one would say, "Now whoo-oo did 
that? It never was I?" 

Still we kept him, his nonchalance captivating 
our hearts. For many weeks and even months 
he required to be tied to his perch with a stout 
string, a string long enough to allow of his making 
short flights. As he grew larger, a light chain was 
put about his foot, as he showed marvelous 
facility in tearing the string apart. He soon 
learned to know us, and of one person — a boy — 
he became especially fond. 

His favorite diet was mice and grain, and it 
was not difficult to supply him from neighboring 
barns. His choice of locality was a wide window- 
seat, and here in the long spring days and in early 
summer he would sit alternately dozing and gaz- 
ing gravely down into the street, over into the 
campus or into the elms in front of the window, 
with a "Won't you walk into my parlor?" look 
at the smaller birds who nested there. 

He grew quite tame and acquired a number of 
funny tricks. One of his favorite jokes was to 
pull the pen or pencil from the hand of anyone 
who sat near him writing, with his hooked beak, 
drop it on the window-sill or table, and then step 



g6 Quests of a Bird hover 

over it back and forth, again and again, untiringly 
and with much dignity. 

He was a great inspiration for all literary 
efforts, was Socrates ! With the wisdom of ap- 
parently uncounted ages in his square, fluffy head, 
he never failed to respond when appealed to. If 
you laid down your pen, weary, tired, not knowing 
what to say next, Socrates would gravely remark, 
u Goo-oo-ood!" and you'd quickly straighten up, 
run over the manuscript, and conclude it would 
touch the heart of your publisher after all, and 
that Socrates was a wise old bird. 

He would willingly sit and gaze at you by the 
half-hour, unwinkingly, while you sounded the 
depths of knowledge in his ears ; but it apparently 
required only a short five minutes for him to know 
one's mental limits! 

When summer days came on, the plumage of 
grayish white gave place to the dress of maturity, 
a pale buff thickly mottled with brown, not less 
beautiful. With advancing age Socrates showed 
almost the intelligence of a parrot. He could 
do almost anything but talk. When the step of 
the boy he loved was heard on the stair, he was 
instantly broad awake, and evinced his delight by 
awkward bowing or dancing as his friend came 
toward him. Sometimes the boy would extinguish 
him beneath a golf-cap, which always drove him 
wild with fear, but he never resented it, invariably 



Socrates 97 

submitting to petting and conversation on its re- 
moval. If he was not noticed in any way, he 
quickly called attention by a chuckling noise in his 
throat, long drawn out, or by picking at the sleeve 
of any one near him. The Cat Owl or Long- 
Eared Owl has also a mewing cry, more often 
heard from him than the hoot of other owls. 

Chimney-swifts nested in the wide old chimney 
of the room occupied by our bird, and sparrows 
filled the woodbine, but they took good care to 
keep out of his reach in their circling flights and 
wary alightings near his window. The other 
birds — jays, cardinals, cat-birds, and many be- 
sides — studied him at first with respectful atten- 
tion, but lost interest when they found he could 
go no further than the window. 

A restful person to have about, was Socrates — 
always calm, always unruffled, always gravely 
patronizing to the world he had known since time 
immemorial, and always, by his superior de- 
meanor, moving his friends to laughter. On 
warm, pleasant days he was allowed the liberty of 
the trees in the garden, thus learning that his chain 
might be unfastened and sometimes taking ad- 
vantage of it, as once when he hied himself away 
to the quince tree, where, like Jack's giant, he 
"smelled the blood of" — not a British subject, 
but of true-blue American citizens in the shape of 
young jay-birds. On a crotch below the nest 



98 Quests of a Bird hover 

stood the big, bushy brown owl, when noise of 
battle brought us to the door, and above him 
fluttered the two old jays, squawking in wild rage 
and occasionally snatching at his rumpled plu- 
mage or swooping before his big eyes. Freighted 
as he was with his chain, it would have been 
impossible for him to catch them, and, after sub- 
mitting to their badgering for a time, during 
which the young ones joined their cries with those 
of their parents, excitedly thrusting their heads 
over the edge of the nest, Socrates concluded that 
discretion was really the better part, and beat a 
retreat to the ground, scudding over the grass 
with tucked-up feathers, as if to keep his skirts 
clean! 

When Fritz, the canary, shook his rippling 
notes on the air, Socrates listened, entranced. 
Perhaps it was the aesthetic part of his nature; 
perhaps the carnal. 

When the hottest days of August came, he 
drooped and grew moody, was cross if touched, 
and forgot or refused to perform his old tricks. 
Cool, dim woods were calling to him, and finally 
we set him free. Not realizing his privileges, 
he hung about the house for a day or two, coming 
when called, but finally sailed away into the cam- 
pus. At intervals he returned to his window, 
even coming inside, and later he came at twilight 
and perched in the trees before the house, mewing 



Socrates 99 

for half an hour at a time. We thought him 
home-sick. After the encounter with the spar- 
rows he returned no more, probably reserving 
his depredations for young wood-birds, captivity 
not having cured him of his cannibalistic appetite. 
Sparrows we would not argue about with him, but 
when it came to song-birds, we felt inclined to 
administer discipline. 

Young birds learn very early to fight in their 
own behalf their natural enemies — hawks, owls 
and cats — and, following the example of their 
parents, will boldly pursue the would-be robber — 
not unsupported, however, by the parent bird, who 
will get behind them and shove them toward 
the assailant. Also the mother will fly at the 
enemy and back to her timid young ones again 
and again, as if she would say, "See how I do 
it!" Sometimes when she leaves them the nest- 
lings turn and turn, but the lesson is repeated un- 
til fighting tactics are thoroughly understood. In 
fact, nearly all birds except the dove, who always 
seems helpless in a case of danger, will soon learn 
to make a vigorous fight for themselves, taught 
by their elders. 

I witnessed an interesting skirmish that took 
place one summer day in an old orchard on my 
grandfather's Massachusetts farm, between a 
Barred Owl and a chipmunk. The little striped fel- 
low frisked down the trunk of an old cherry-tree 



ioo Quests of a Bird Lover 

vanishing into a hole in the heart of the tree. 
Lying immediately in front of the tree and just 
below the hole was an old moss-grown stump. 
From an adjacent tree the owl caught sight of him 
on the instant of his going in, and swooped like an 
arrow straight at the opening, alighting on the 
stump and peering stupidly in. Fortunately for 
the little animal, the hole was too small to admit 
his enemy, who, however, with the view of be- 
sieging, settled himself complacently to wait a 
reappearance. The chipmunk, not .being able 
to see the owl from within, soon came stealing 
cautiously to the door and poked out his head. 
Beholding his adversary, he vanished with light- 
ning speed. Another wait, then again out came 
the little brown head with the shining eyes. This 
time the owl made a dive, but was not so quick as 
the chipmunk, who was again safely hidden. Af- 
ter waiting a few moments, the owl flew up to the 
first branch of the tree above, and shortly after- 
ward out came the chipmunk, gay and saucy. 
"Chee, chee, chee !" he squeaked. "Anybody 
here?" Apparently no one was there, so he con- 
fidently sat upright on the stump and looked about 
him. Finding the coast clear, he flirted up the 
trunk of the tree, stopping as if he had been shot 
when he suddenly espied the owl sitting aloft. In 
the twinkling of an eye he turned tail and fled 
downward, barely making his hiding-place when 



Socrates 101 

his enemy reached the door. Twice more he at- 
tempted to escape, trembling in his small door- 
way, looking, listening, and vanishing at the first 
sound of wings as the owl swooped at him again 
and again. Then the owl gave up pursuit and 
flopped away, leaving behind him a little prisoner, 
who dared not try to get away for fully an hour 
longer, and then in fear and trembling crept out, 
jumped to the ground, and in two or three quick 
springs was safe among the chinks of an old stone 
wall — hiding-places that defied any bird of prey 
that ever flew, to say nothing of a half-blinded 
old owl ! 

The little Screech Owl, of which one may see 
much if one lives near woods, is a sociable little 
bird, as are also the Saw-whet Owls, who come 
quite close to the house in the early afternoons al- 
most within hand-reach of the window. They al- 
low one to talk to them, but do not often come 
very close to feed while people are about. 

Three young owls of this species appeared one 
evening directly in front of our window, sitting on 
a limb of the peach-tree in a funny little row, gaz- 
ing complacently at the light which shone upon 
them, with all the appearance of having been in- 
vited to a party! 

The Barn Owl is among our most beneficial 
owls, and shows great friendliness to our song- 
birds. It is not prepossessing in appearance, and 



102 Quests of a Bird Lover 

has in its face the quizzical and at the same time 
anxious look worn by the monkey tribe, and is, in- 
deed, from its resemblance to a monkey called the 
"monkey-faced owl." One of these birds was 
captured this winter in the woods near here, 
caged, and used for window advertising in a store. 
Poor thing, he was very restless and looked ex- 
tremely bored when he was awake, but, truth to 
tell, he put in most of his time sleeping, only once 
in a while opening on us a patronizing eye. The 
plumage of the Barn Owl is very striking, pale 
orange and white predominating and accentuated 
with bright reddish-brown tints. 

Nesting in barn-lofts, they will in no way inter- 
fere with other bird tenants. Swallows build near 
them in security, and pigeons or doves nest fear- 
lessly. A certain Barn Owl in my neighbor's barn 
showed much interest in the youngsters who filled 
the nests adjacent to her own, walking up and 
down the long beams in the barn loft, and gaping 
down into this nest or that with curious wonder in 
Jber big blue-black eyes. That she really consid- 
ered her neighbors was shown fully when on a 
disastrous day a shrike swooped through the wide 
doors and pounced upon a half-grown fledgling 
of the swallow tribe. The little bird cried out 
piteously, rousing the owl, who swept up from 
her own nest with a wild cry, so startling the 
butcher bird that it dropped the nestling and 



Socrates 103 

darted away — too late, however, to save its life, 
for the claws of the shrike had torn it badly. 

The young of this curious "monkey-faced" owl 
are extremely beautiful, and in their nests in the 
hollows of trees or in barns they look like small 
snow-balls, their downy plumage being nearly 
pure white. This owl shows fine perception of 
domestic economy, for when the first brood have 
put on a moderate supply of feathers, she deposits 
two more eggs in the nest, the warmth from the 
first nestlings helping to hatch the second brood, 
thus giving the material part of the household 
more time to forage and for relaxation. Occa- 
sionally she adds another couple of eggs, obliging 
the second brood in their turn to nourish the third 
lot of youngsters. 

As to owl traditions, almost anyone has heard 
that one calling and hooting near a dwelling 
presages disaster, but the mysterious way of 
averting this, I am told, is to go turn over an 
old shoe, turn it upside down — and the owl, out- 
raged, flies away! 



ST. VALENTINE'S DAY AND THE BIRDS 

"No cloud above, no earth below, 
A universe of sky and snow" 

That was not true of the thirteenth, for the 
"old woman" was so busy "picking her geese" 
the whole world beneath her was a-toss in the 
eddying snow. But to-day, St. Valentine's own, is 
a marvel of blue, June sky that stretches kindly, 
promisingly over an earth-covering of dazzling, 
bejeweled snow. The birds are not mating, the 
robins have not come, but a cardinal I heard, 
with a hint of love-notes in his voice, triumphantly 
whistling from the bare, top-high branches of an 
elm. 

Yesterday, a bitter day of storm and snow, 
was a busy day for birds and bird boarding-house 
keepers. Food was hard to get, birds were hun- 
gry, and the supply was exhausted almost as soon 
as spread on the board. Worried about the in- 
adequacy of my own small board, I asked by 
telephone of the public school here, how many 
bird-boards were sustained by the children, and 
learned that out of two hundred and sixty young- 
sters sixty feeding boards for the birds were sus- 

104 



St. Valentine's Day and the Birds 105 

tained at the different homes. A splendid aver- 
age ! Some boards are placed in trees, some in 
windows, some in sheltered porches, and add to 
this number perhaps twenty-five that are sustained 
by grown folks in the little village, and it does 
not seem likely "Our Little Sisters the Birds," as 
the gentle St. Francis named them, will "lack or 
suffer hunger" in our midst when fields are bare. 

If you were here in my cozy room this morn- 
ing, with the glowing fire reflecting from the glass 
of the book-case onto the window-pane, and 
thence to the snow through the dim gray atmos- 
phere of swiftly falling flakes, and sat with me 
watching the birds come and go 'neath an old 
umbrella I have put out on the board for a wind- 
break and snow-shield, you would certainly enjoy 
yourself. These stormy days you may put out 
food — cracked walnuts, hickory nuts, suet, and 
pecans (at twenty cents a pound), bread crumbs, 
cracked corn, and sunflower seed (the latter to 
tempt the cardinals who have not once visited my 
board this winter), and in half an hour the food 
will be blanketed almost beyond the birds' scratch- 
ing abilities. So each day, and sometimes three or 
four times a day, I must brush off the snow and 
nuts together, clear off the board, and provide a 
new supply. This, as one who watches my ways 
is prone to say, "is sheer extravagance." (He 
little knows my birds pay for themselves in print- 



io6 Quests of a Bird hover 

ers ink!) Thus, to-day, hoping to win his approval 
by my thrifty ways, and also to make life easier 
for my feathered proteges, I have put up over my 
bird-board an old umbrella. My neighbor, pass- 
ing, jeered at it for a "scarecrow." Not at all. It 
is the safest shield possible for winter birds in 
winter weather, and, though I a little bit feared 
the result might be the same as if it were in a 
cornfield, in just about three minutes a tufted tit- 
mouse slipped under, peered at it inquisitively, 
and fell to feeding. Followed him a chickadee; 
then three titmice, fat and fluffy from high living; 
then a downy woodpecker, who showed timidity in 
trying the new scheme of dining under a thing so 
big and black, and in hopping down onto a board 
from whose surface sprouted a leaning stick of 
pearl and silver. Doesn't that sound extrava- 
gant? But the silver is flattened by the blows of 
time, and the silk cover, alas ! only the rags of age 
could possibly excuse. But its days of usefulness 
are not over. Its new vocation is its best, and, 
a long-ago gift to me from the "Friend of the 
Birds," what could be more appropriate than its 
giving shelter to her birds? Two nut-hatches are 
on the board examining with interest the old um- 
brella and digging away at the frozen suet with 
small concern for any evil portent. Just this in- 
stant a tufted titmouse alighted on a rib of the 
shelter-house, peered down through the gaping 



St. Valentine's Day and the Birds 107 

hole at the banquet board below, and energetically 
flew down through it to the side of two other tit- 
mice, who scolded unmercifully at such rude be- 
havior. They do not in the least mind if my 
window is open wide. They all come indifferently 
to eat of the nuts, and probably a little patience 
would teach them there is really no harm in me, 
and they would eat out of my hands as they cer- 
tainly do eat the crumbs from directly under my 
hands. In fact the good Dominie has made me 
the gift of a six-inch board the width of a window, 
with a small gate that swings outward, which, 
being placed beneath the lifted window, shuts out 
the air, but enables one to thrust out a hand 
through the opening and train the birds into con- 
fidence. Dreading nipped fingers, I have not yet 
had the courage to make the attempt. 

Falstaffian-looking, cheeky little beggars of 
squirrels have found out my board, to my sorrow. 
Not content with their own squirrel-house in the 
campus, with bushels of nuts and corn poured 
into it weekly, they keep sharp eyes on what's 
doin' at my window. The little maple in front of 
my window will be full of birds waiting my leisure 
to bring cracked nuts every single morning; and 
nearly every morning a great walnut across the 
road will show, stretched at full length on the 
branches, one, two, and three squirrels watching 
from there just when the birds are fed, and in 



108 Quests of a Bird Lover 

short order they slip down the tree to scamper 
across the way, scurry up to my front steps, spring 
one by one from the top step to the outside water 
faucet, and thence to my bird-board, which is hung 
from my front living-room window. Should I 
happen to be sitting by, the robber in fur pauses 
as if shot, puts one hand over his fast-beating 
heart, wondering, fearing, "Will she let me stay? 
Will she not?" and usually she doesn't, as crack- 
ing nuts for lazy squirrels is a little too much 
trouble. So in the twinkling of an eye, over the 
edge of the board drops my visitor, only to repeat 
the operation at different times during the day. I 
wouldn't mind the once, but my squirrels seem 
never to understand their "room is better than 
their company." Even if I generously call them 
to the door and they take a whole nut from my 
hand, they never by any chance heed my implor- 
ing words, "Now do let the birds' food alone !" 
Should I do as a friend does — give each squirrel 
one nut each morning, at a stated early hour, and 
then say, "Now, Nip and Tuck (which happens to 
be their names), that's all for to-day," and have 
them scamper down two stories over the vines of 
the house and keep their distance the remainder 
of the day, I would be satisfied. 

While I have no cardinal on my board this 
winter, a friend has two — a friend whose crippled 
hands and arms and feet, whose whole bed-ridden 



St. Valentine's Day and the Birds 109 

body has not been able to enchain a spirit that is 
ever cheerful, brave, and glad, and interested in 
things and people. For her these two cardinals 
have been whistling all winter through storms of 
hail and snow, and feeding familiarly, tamely on 
1-he window-sill, and nesting each year in the 
honeysuckle outside. 

Now the tiny chickadees are slipping up and 
down the steel handle of my silver-tipped um- 
brella, with merry questioning "Dee, dee, dee's" 
as they grow into a sense of what this big, black 
thing is for. Why, to keep them warm and dry, 
of course, and to make life endurable to folks who 
have no shoes ! And how the snow comes down — » 
a whirlwind of huge, white flakes, turning into 
dim, distant ghosts all out-of-door things. On my 
window-board it is not "Bairnies cuddled doon," 
but birdies cuddled doon, for a bevy of titmice 
and chickadees are snugly ensconced in the driest 
corner, peering out at the weather and pecking 
occasionally at the nuts, mayhap sometimes glad 
of the glow within the room. Who knows ? For 
birds surely do like "folks," and are in apparent 
sympathy with all their pursuits! Witness a 
chickadee who has for six years returned to a cer- 
tain bird-board and the kindly ministrations of the 
same person. He daily eats from her hand, and 
his identity is established by three curly feathers 
in his tail, which, she tells me, are exactly like an 



no Quests of a Bird Lover 

interrogation point. The titmouse, too, eats from 
her hand, but it must be always in one position. 
If lifted an inch from the board, it is something 
the titmouse does not understand, and he sheers 
warily away. The curly-tailed chickadee, how- 
ever, allows many liberties. 

The guinea woodpecker, the most beautiful of 
my birds, is now upon the board, lured by nice, 
soft pieces of fresh, yellow suet I have just laid 
out and hung on nails at the side of the board. 
Hurrah! who cares for snow when you've got 
some place to keep warm and dry and have plenty 
to eat. How the gay, scarlet color in their crowns 
brightens up things in this snow-time, and what 
a goodly appetite every bird seems to have 1 It's 
not such a long backward look to the days when 
there were no bird laws of protection in Ohio. 
Thus many there are who can recall the scourge 
of the "measuring-worm" in the old college cam- 
pus, where summer time saw the foliage stripped 
from the trees as if by fire. When (as this old, 
sheltering umbrella, tapping its points against my 
panes to-day reminds me) this thing we children 
called the "measuring-worm" made merry with 
all young green leaves, and swung from the trees 
in millions by gossamer threads, all down the 
many paths in the campus, in fact from all the 
trees in the village ; but how much more devastat- 



St. Valentine's Day and the Birds III 

ing and terrible it was in the forest of the campus ! 
I have gone down those paths protected by an 
open umbrella from those swinging worms that, 
after the walk, hung like a fringe at the edges of 
the cover. I hesitated to tell this in a conversa- 
tion on birds not long since, but quickly learned 
there were others who remembered the plague as 
well. Nowadays it's a chance that we "meet up" 
with a ghastly green measuring-worm anywhere. 
Bird protection is worth while after all. Not a 
sparrow has come near my protecting umbrella. 
It's a fact, but an odd one, that sparrows are 
afraid of anything that moves. Thus the flapping 
rags of silk warn them off when they attempt to 
alight. Nut-hatches, hairies, downies, chickadees, 
guineas, titmice (two kinds) have "called" way 
up into the "sixties" since the umbrella went up 
two hours ago. 

Whether any birds slept on my umbrella handle 
under the silken rags last night I do not know; 
but at dark a friendly little chickadee was perched 
there, with feathers all fluffed out and seemingly 
half a-doze, and this morning the deep snow on 
the board was a network with the tracks of small 
feet; and at early dawn the pounding of the wood- 
peckers on the frozen suet awakened me to the 
needs of "My Little Sisters the Birds." 

As an afterthought the winds rose up this 



112 Quests of a Bird Lover 

morning and snatched away my sheltering um- 
brella, carrying it through the air like a witch 
going up on her broom-stick — her black skirts 
fluttering, away and away in the blizzard of snow 
— and where it landed I know not ! 



FLOWER-GARDENS AND RIVER-FLOODS 
ON THE BANKS OF THE KAW 

"For the world is full of roses, 
And the roses full of dew'/ 

A little street right out of a book is Lee Street. 
It lies like a country road across the fields, with its 
sunken gardens and tiny vine-wreathed cots ; and, 
dear me ! all the flower-loving folk who abide be- 
neath their shelter are my friends, stranger tho' I 
be! The path to town is only a little lane bor- 
dered with asters, big yellow sunflowers, and 
sweet clover, quite breast-high. Such tiny hand- 
kerchief plots — with hardly a spear of grass — the 
old brown earth yields nothing but bloom ! 

It looks so peaceful — Lee Street. Time a 
plenty have the cottagers for floral gardening, 
while I — ah, we are thrifty — we have only alfalfa, 
in lieu of lavender beds; and sheets of dried ap- 
ples sunning on the grass, visited by butterflies of 
gorgeous hue — tame butterflies, for they tarry 
until "Miss Andes" (Harriet's black cat) gobbles 
them up appetizingly. Lee Street — the east part 
— is low-lying land, annually overflowed by the 
"peaceful Kaw" (did I not once call it?), as the 

"3 



H4 Quests of a Bird Lover 

Nile enriches its banks each year. The soil is, 
therefore, a wonderful producer, and the little 
gardens hugging the cottages are wildernesses of 
bloom. Behind them stretch wide meadows, vel- 
vety green fields, and far away lie the blue hills. 
A ribbon of "creek" runs through these fields, 
so small a mark in a summer's day landscape ; but 
— wait — till — it — rains ! Then this tiny brown 
stream, that has bitten its way in a zigzag gash 
across the meadows, shows what it really can do ! 

A big, pink, summer rose stands in a little 
Rookwood vase on my desk — a gift in the dusk 
last night from the owner of a Lee Street garden. 
A huge bunch of purple-pink phlox went with it 
— a generous overflow of bloom thrust into my 
arms. The houses stand, also, below the railroad 
track, and the sturdy flower growth climbs the 
terrace shoulder high. An old-time rose, "Queen 
of the Prairies," covers the front of a cot 
whose eaves I can reach from the worn stone sill. 

The patient labor of a white-haired "grand- 
mother" has evolved all the surrounding beauty 
enclosed by her fence, and her patient love cares, 
too, for her heritage of a couple of small, black- 
eyed grandbabies, who gleefully show me how 
some seeds "pop!" 

"Good land!" she says, as she picks for me a 
posy here, and here, and here. "You from Ohio? 



Flower-Gardens and River-Floods 115 

So be I, — southwestern corner." On the instant 
we are "kin!" "Years ago," she adds, "before 
the Raid, I came here." 

Every inch of her land has flowered, from early 
spring crocuses to the asters of September. Awak- 
ening four-o'clocks point the time o' day in the 
garden next. "Guten Abend" comes in jolly 
tones from the neighborhood of a pipe beneath 
the porch. This garden of "Deutschland" has, 
what? Naturally, tulips, also crowds and crowds 
of "spider-wort," nodding like a restless sea — all 
the graceful skeleton flowers. Orderly rows of 
sweet peas stretch across the grass, then come 
the two gardens of "Lee" that yield me greatest 
largess. Surely, where such quiet reigns, where 
bees hold carnival among honey-flowers, are only 
gay days and happiness. Not so! Helplessness 
and pain, tragedy and sorrow, have drawn lines 
in the face of the cheery little owner, always tired, 
never "donsy," who welcomes my dog and me on 
our twilight rambles. How the corners of my 
pretty rooms have glimmered all summer yellow, 
pink, and white with petals from this garden ! 

Next door, all alone in the dusk, sits an old 
"Son of Erin," smoking, chatting, amidfet the 
loveliness and perfume of his dooryard, no less a 
joy to himself than to passersby. A year agone 
the old wife left it for that country we foolishly 



n6 Quests of a Bird Lover 

call "Far," and his tidy, old-fashioned, lonely 
housekeeping I enrich with one of Harriet's pies I 
(Small return for his posies!) 

Shall I enumerate the flowers of this "doll 
house" garden? One may hardly step without 
crushing a blossom under foot. They grow and 
grow and encroach on one another's demesne in 
a scandalous way, and it's not even a case of a 
"survival of the fittest." They all "survive," and 
thrive, and bear flowers, each in its season. Lark- 
spur in crowds — pink, blue, white — nod in the 
wind. "The blue beats 'em all out; they're all rin- 
nin' to blue !" says Mr. "Erin." Counters of the 
hours we find again, in this garden. Dusk, and 
the deep greenness a-twinkle with crowds of stars 
— the white flowers of the "Nicotine," and of 
most sweet perfume, over them hovering beauti- 
ful night-moths. 

Across the fence drifts a smell of "smudge"; 
light blue-gray smoke floats softly above the 
flowers. This "kapes off the skeeters" from this 
bit of "Erin's green isle!" In so small a space 
was never yet crowded so lavish bloom, since first 
the blue-flags proclaimed the spring, and golden 
English daisies bordered all the paths. "The land 
is rich," quoth Erin's son; "if a seed blows over 
the fince, it takes root I" 

All this is Lee Street in the summer. I wish I 
might name you the myriad flowers that grow and 



Flower-Gardens and River-Floods 117 

glow, and that each evening I walk out to see. 
Snow-balls, Jerusalem cherries, tulips, "daffy's," 
columbine, lilies, "honesty," "ladies' delight," 
lady's slipper, pansies, pinks, feverfew, cockscomb, 
"fly-catch," "bachelor's button," Indian shot, ver- 
benas, petunias, "old man," balsam, — I can not 
name them all, — and roses, roses, roses! And 
sweeter yet, the sprig of mint — quaint, homey 
herb, that sends, with its fragrance, my thoughts 
wandering back to the banks of silver-bottomed 
creeks in Ohio ! 

Came upon all this loveliness, then, in June- 
time, the sudden floods of the west, and the old 
boat rotting high and dry by a tree-trunk tells 
the story. 

Came in the night lanterns flashing, voices call- 
ing, pigs squealing, and, like the "High Tide on 
the Coast of Lincolnshire," the sleepy little 
stream, hardly to be seen in "dry time," clutched 
in a mighty hand all these bottom lands. Bottom 
lands! Go to! It climbed the mother hills — - 
"high, high, high!" 

Who has not seen a Kansas flood knows nothing 
of the sudden power of water. Wakened by 
shouts for help, on the heels of a summer day, 
from my window, at 2 A. m., I watched by light- 
ning flash my "culled folks" neighbors drive up 
their bewitched pigs from the bottom lands to 
the ark of safety (our barn), hill-top high — a 



1 1 8 Quests of a Bird Lover 

convenient "Ararat" ! Two short hours of rain, 
and down the lanes and along "Lee Street" are 
the folk being brought out of their houses in 
boats, securely sailing to safety over the tops of 
barbed wire fences! The "livestock" is hurried 
to safe quarters, and the frantic cats scurry up the 
trees ! 

To watch the "Raw's" placid flow, in early 
spring, as it turns and twists, with mirror-like 
smoothness, between feathery green banks; to 
dream away the sunset time on low-lying land of 
the north shore, while from blue the water turns 
to yellow, and the trees that march along the 
banks dip black, trembling shadows into the 
golden flood ; then magically change from gold to 
pink, to deep rose, and soft rolls of cottony clouds 
drift slowly, veilingly, over the tinted mirror; the 
canoes pulling at their stakes seem to invert and 
spill a golden shower, as the rose tint deepens to 
purple, and flowers again in afterglow of gold and 
green and ashes of roses, and in shadowy black- 
ness sparkles with the few faint stars, tossing 
up the wee crescent of a young moon. Ah ! the 
"Kaw" is a smiling deceiver ! 

In time of peace and safety — thus. But from 
the south shore, above the submerged Santa Fe 
tracks, watch it in the flood time. 

The hot June sun rose, to shine upon a multi- 
tude of people ever going in one direction, crowd- 



Flower-Gardens and River-Floods 119 

ing the bridge to watch the river. Endlessly they 
come, lining the banks that are green to the river's 
edge, and jamming the bridge-ends, drawn by the 
irresistible fascination of the roaring water — 
water that booms (these full-moon nights) on 
through my dreams a mile away! Over the 
bridge so soon to be closed to all travel, wound 
an endless stream of vehicles, carrying the house- 
hold goods of family after family driven out by 
the sudden water. Atop of nearly every load 
rode a lot of wide-eyed babies of every shade and 
degree of color : from white, to cream, and ebony 
blacks. Chickens crowed their excitement from 
rocking "coops" atilt on the wagon-tail, while 
wonder, commiseration, and awe filled the hearts 
of the beholders, we who were strung along the 
bridge-rail balancing in our minds the element 
which might be the easier to contend with — fire or 
water? 

Islands of green are duplicated on the bosom 
of the river by the afternoon sun, where once was 
only land. The waters spread and spread, pla- 
cidly, ever more widely, in and out among tree- 
tops, on the further shore, and among the cot- 
tages, forming lagoons, with here and there a 
tiny dwelling that seemed afloat among the foliage 
of water willows and of maples. And how they 
struggled to hold their own, those trees, swinging 
about and bowing themselves as in acquiescence, 



120 Quests of a Bird Lover 

until the topmost branches dipped themselves into 
the flood! Then, once more erect and hopeful, 
a shivering would seize every leaf and branch; 
powerless, but apparently alive again, the waters 
would suck them under, and in the end, sapped 
at the roots, out into the stream they floated 
slowly, majestically, the work of a hundred years 
wiped out in two days. 

How the sun shone on the little empty houses 
facing westward! How, hour after hour, under 
our glass, the water crept up and up the front 
doors of the empty cottages, inch by inch. Snowy 
curtained the windows, but the water crept over 
the whiteness of the sills. How homey they yet 
looked ! A letter and a bundle of papers protrud- 
ing from the mailboxes at the side of front doors 
in that silent city! The posts of the piazzas waist 
deep in water, and as the foe worked its subtle 
way about the foundations, the tidy little cot- 
tages, white and yellow, wearily sagged to the 
front, the roofs grew aslant, as the waters threat- 
ened to swallow them up ! 

From the shore below us a boat puts out. Who 
ventures abroad on such a flood, and only a 
quarter of a mile above the dam? A woman, 
holding an umbrella, a man rowing. Slowly 
across the wide yellow flood their tiny boat creeps 
in among the treetops, in and out among the green- 



Flower-Gardens and River-Floods 121 

fringed alleys of the little village resting on the 
waters, and is lost to sight. Up and up come the 
waters, the boat-houses are submerged to their 
roofs, and the sun shines down on the glittering 
river, and on the silent concourse of people, who 
stay on and on in mysterious fascination. Out 
from the treetops far away crawls the tiny skiff. 
Safely the journey is made back, the quest ap- 
parent long ere the boat is moored. From one of 
the half-submerged cottages the thrifty housewife 
has plucked the family wash ! 

Flotsam of all kinds dots the river. A pair 
of old shoes go sailing companionably along! 
From habit, apparently, they keep in step, off for 
a jaunt in unknown seas! A plot of earth, box- 
enclosed, all abloom with flowers, snatched from 
some veranda mayhap, comes dancing down the 
current. A long, long plank; something alive has 
taken refuge on it ! Rats? No. Rabbits! Three 
scared little cotton-tails, who, as the dam shouts 
into their long ears, huddle themselves together, 
and are lost as the board shoots under! 

Comes, later, another plank, this time bearing 
two roosters adrift from the safe shelter of a 
farmyard. "Hail to the voyagers!" from an 
interested crowd. If they would only float 
ashore ! A-sail and a-sail, and the current 

draws them to the big, smooth billows of the 



122 Quests of a Bird Lover 

dam. At its verge, with despairing scream, one 
fowl springs off and disappears. The other — 
how, or why, or wherefore — makes the plunge, 
and, to our amaze, comes up still "aboard," and 
sails swiftly away into quiet waters, to the acclaim 
of uproarious cheers ! 

All that little city is cut off from the outside 
world — a city of silence and of empty houses. 
The sun shines strongly down. There is no wind, 
no rain, only a mighty silence and a flood of water 
four miles wide stretching at our feet; and we 
watch and watch, and the birds fly down to curi- 
ously investigate every sort of wreckage that dots 
the flood. In the branches of a lilac, at my right, 
overhanging the cliff's edge, a cat-bird tunes up ! 
I spy her nest, and her mate, and the silent crowd 
turns to watch her as she talks, flits about, and 
sings, and sings, and ever sings! 

It creeps, and crawls, this river; it eats up land 
and grain, and takes toll when it can. It swallows 
up a tiny island — the last remaining morsel of a 
widow, and her daughter, who is blind. 

The "old man," she says, "fell dead the year 
before on our Island a' cutting wood." Then as 
suddenly the waters fall, having wrought ruin. 
The danger is over. 

But the river god is not yet glutted. The 
wreckage must be torn away from the pier. It 
brings work at last for a man idle all winter — a 



Flower-Gardens and River-Floods 123 

man with eight children. But the river takes toll, 
and, with the first stroke of his pick draws him 
under, and whirls him over the dam. And the 
sun shines on and on, and the birds sing. 



AT THE OLD STONE BRIDGE 

"Birds of a feather flock together." 

Springtime — and New England! All the 
young forests of birch trees delicately bedecking 
themselves in pale green gowns. Not less lovely, 
however, were their garments of the fall — long, 
drooping branches of yellow leaves — pale lemon 
yellow — until a tramp among the tall, white tree- 
trunks was walking in a golden forest. 

But 'twas spring, May-time, and New England 
apple orchards were noisy with birds. Birds were 
flying north, birds were flying south, not alone 
ordinary, every-day song-birds (among them no 
whistle of the cardinal!), but shore-birds innu- 
merable — big white gulls, ducks of many colors, 
and flock after flock of the graceful, trusting gray- 
and-white terns. 

No long tarrying they made above the winding 
river road that seemed their main highway, but 
long enough for many an interesting hour to be 
spent in watching them; not in nesting ways, but 
in their industrious fishing. From high in air they 
chose the spot where they would dive; then, on 
beating wing, would hover over the water until 

124 



At the Old Stone Bridge 125 

my patience was exhausted in counting those same 
"beats." Will you believe, in one case the num- 
ber mounted up to over three hundred, without 
the tern moving from the appointed spot, mid-air; 
and then, without diving at all, flew swiftly on 
up-stream ! Shoreward bound, all these travelers, 
to nest in the clean, sweet-smelling sea-sand, de- 
layed a little by a bird with, apparently, a broken 
wing. But none of my assistance would they 
have ! Let me approach too closely to the dis- 
abled one dragging along the bank, and from rock 
and rock the crowd came swooping, squawking 
defiance and fierce warning as they surrounded 
the defenseless one with solicitous protection. 
How they got the lame little fellow away, I never 
knew; but they managed it some time 'tween dark 
and dawn. 

But it is not of terns I started out to write you, 
but of a wholly new bird, and of one, I venture 
to say, few of my readers have seen. In any case, 
it was pure luck on my part to stumble into such 
rare company, northward sailing. 

You may question that word "sailing," but it's 
a true one, for it was on the water I first saw 
them, gaily disporting themselves on the topaz- 
colored stream called the "Assabet." It is a river 
familiar to me by canoe, by water-lily paddlings, 
by many a picnic on a tiny island that stems its 
current; but to find it a place for bird courtship 



126 Quests of a Bird Lover 

was new, indeed! And the courtship of a shore 
bird twenty-odd miles from the sound of the sea, 
and thousands of miles from his or her — his and 
her, I should have said — nesting place, was far- 
thest from my mind, as I plunged ankle-deep 
across soggy meadows, tramped fern-bordered 
roads, followed riotous rivulets chattering adown 
rocky hillsides, and peered into all sorts of wild- 
grape thickets. The chiseling woodpecker fled 
before my coming step; the bluebirds dashed to 
the fence-tops; the thrush slipped from her nest, 
complaining; the catbird called "Halt!" and many 
a bright black eye peered out questioning my 
right. Inquisitiveness they did not recognize as 
an attribute of the bird lover, so I passed them 
all by as "old stories," though a bird-nesting of 
any kind is never an u old story." 

I was hunting — what? Why, the nest of the 
little brown creeper, always snugly, cunningly, 
cannily laid at the foot of a tree ! But the finding 
was not for me, and my quest ended by the arched 
stone bridge, beneath which the waters of the 
u Assabet" slip smoothly, snatching at barberry 
branches along green shores, dragging them 
down, then swinging them back, all fresh and 
glistening from the ever-recurring bath. Discon- 
tented, I leaned on the rail — no new birds, "no 
nothing!" A whole morning thrown away! 
Whirr! swoop! swish! — exactly that way it 



At the Old Stone Bridge 127 

happened, and with a rustle of wings like the 
sound of brown leaves, a multitude of tiny birds 
swept past me, alighting on the waters of the 
river as softly as thistle-down. I gasped, and 
with wide eyes watched the strange maneuvers of 
this army — this fleet — afloat on the bosom of the 
river. They swam, they dived, they zigzagged 
as swiftly as any energetic water-fly you ever saw. 
"Birds of the air and tree-tops, that swim!" quoth 
I to the world in general. A shaking of wings, 
a sudden upward flight, a fussy settling of them- 
selves in branches, a pruning, a gossiping, a chat- 
tering, quite oblivious of me — and not the least 
bit in the world afraid! A horde of little birds 
with plumage of sooty gray, and sparrow brown, 
with neck of rusty red, a ring of color quite en- 
circling it, dark-colored wings, almost black, 
dashed with feathers of white. In a few moments 
back they flew to the river, riding upon the water 
so securely, so serenely, slipping beneath the sur- 
face and rising again like bubbles, to skim along 
as swiftly, apparently, as they might on wing, and 
ever and always was their swimming upstream, 
against the current; zigzagging, always; never in 
direct line; darting about in great enjoyment of 
their bath; then to the tree again, scattering the 
drops in a silvery shower as they briskly shook 
themselves. Far they must have come, dusty they 
must have been, for a French coiffeur would have 



128 Quests of a Bird Lover 

required less time and attention than these trav- 
elers now gave to the care of their wings. Widely 
extended, every separate feather was drawn 
through the mouth, was oiled, and combed in way 
most amazing! They might have been going to 
a party. In point of fact, they were whiling away 
time on a journey to the Arctic Circle — though it 
required recourse to my bird books to acquaint 
myself with this fact. A third time, as I watched, 
fascinated, they descended to the river to begin 
once more their maneuvers, their erratic gyrations, 
uncertain, aimless — aimless? Not so! If not 
mated, yet ideas of a home and of young birds 
are stirring in their heads, and, all old-established 
customs pushed to the wall, it is the male who is 
courted and pursued in this matrimonial race. 

At dark I climbed the rocky, winding lane lead- 
ing to the farm-house, and, by candle-light (think- 
ing this my one and only glimpse of the birds), 
I dipped deep into an old book on ornithology, 
to learn that the migrants were none other than 
''Northern Phalaropes," rare in those parts, rare 
in the lateness of their travels. What had belated 
them? By what circuitous route had they made 
their way? Had they started in company with 
that wonderful "Golden Plover" that we made 
friends with on the shores of the Gulf, on April 
29th, where the bird arrives as true to time each 
year as the day of the month? Who knows? 



At the Old Stone Bridge 129 

Dawn of the following morning found me at 
the bridge rail, and dawn also found the travelers 
bestirring themselves, I feared, for flight, yet in 
this vicinity they remained for five days, with 
myself an humble attendant. 

They were wonderful little birds, those pha- 
laropes — dainty, confiding, and of marvelous 
grace in their movements. My first advances in 
the way of "bread cast upon the water" were re- 
ceived with evident surprise ; but upon the second 
offering the birds swam swiftly after the supply. 
The cracked corn I scattered beneath the tree — 
their tree — close by the bridge they gobbled up 
as would a crowd of hungry pigeons. 

In the garb of the birds I noted little distinc- 
tion, but as all things seemed going by "contra- 
ries," the female wore colors of deeper dye, was 
gayer — as becomes the one who goes a-courting — 
and, as the female does not do much of the brood- 
ing, a "protective" coloring in her seemed not 
much matter. The pursued ones, the wooed 
ones, however, made it distinctly apparent that 
they wished to avoid matrimonial entanglements. 
One little bird on the water would be surrounded 
by a number of others, who would try by every 
means to attract his attention, or would crowd 
closely about him as the male zigzagged around 
in most lofty indifference. Had the tiny would-be 
brides known the meaning of the word handker- 



130 Quests of a Bird Lover 

chief, and had they possessed the article, they 
would have flirted it; as it was, no bird-wooer of 
a different gender ever put forth greater effort to 
win a mate. They would bow and bow before 
the liege lord, then, though a mere mite of a 
bird, the female would arch her neck like a swan, 
and glide proudly before him, barring his prog- 
ress as he made all speed to escape the fair one. 

For long I could not imagine what all this 
game that resembled "hide and seek" betokened, 
for it was funny in the extreme. Such determina- 
tion not to be caught! Such sudden flights up- 
stream to farther waters, with two or three 
birds in close pursuit; a settling of themselves 
upon the water; a repetition of coy ways, as the 
blandishments were anew pressed upon the unwil- 
ling one ; then back to the bridge they would fly, 
the whole frolicsome lot of them. Schoolboys 
on a holiday could not have had a livelier merry- 
making. 

Each day I studied the little comedy of court- 
ship, for not again do I ever expect to u meet up" 
with such rare birds, or scrape acquaintance with 
such gentle, exquisite little creatures, or myself 
become an object of the commiserating pity of 
Yankee farmers, as they jogged over my bridge 
townward, doubting the sanity of such a devoted 
bridge-tender. On the fifth day of their sojourn, 
the birds were scarcely at all in the water, remain- 



At the Old Stone Bridge 131 

ing persistently in the tree, at intervals making 
an elaborate toilet and sleepily resting "between 
whiles." On the sixth day every bird had flown. 
Up in the Arctic springtime a nest will be care- 
lessly made, or the dark, ugly four eggs will be 
laid on the side of a small hummock near a lake, 
or on the shore, and the now subdued and well- 
trained male will do all the brooding, until, in 
time, four downy, yellow bantlings will appear, 
alert, hungry, and with the ability to feed them- 
selves promptly. 



GRATITUDE OF AN AFTER-EASTER 
ROBIN 

"Robins and mocking birds 

That all the day long 

Athwart straight sunshine 

Weave cross-threads of song!' 

Lilac time and an old lady digging and delving 
in her garden, a garden that has been reproducing 
itself for fifty odd years from the first plantings 
by her own fingers. After-Easter Monday — and 
bluebirds aflit in the foliage; warblers beginning 
to wing their way northward — flecks of flame 
among the greenery; and robins, generally first 
to come, tardily arriving. 

Above the head of this "Garden Lady" wings 
of all colors soar and swing, for the birds follow 
her movements, attend her adown the garden 
walks, and "grab" for worms when the trowel 
unearths them. 

About the sturdy, mossy roots of giant elms, 
maples, and cottonwoods, the crocus flowers 
early, in lavender and gold, all heedless of wintry 
winds ; daffodils march farther every season amid 
tall grasses; narcissus and the "Star of Bethle- 

132 



Gratitude of an After-Easter Robin 133 

hem" besprinkle the ground like stars; wild 
"sweet William" pinks all the shadowy places; 
the "prickly-pear" flames out and burns in every 
nook and corner; the "Judas-tree" paints itself in 
lilac-rose; "Bridal wreath" tosses blossomy arms 
about in every vagrant breeze; the biggest, puffi- 
est snowballs hang tantalizingly high; the lilac 
hedge is a royal road of purple, traversed by 
crowds of buzzing courtiers clad in gold; and 
everything is wild and wandering, and grows at 
its own sweet will in this old-time garden, that 
yields flowers in every summer month for the 
altar of the Most High God, for I myself have 
helped the "Garden Lady" carry her fragrant 
harvest to the church by carriage loads. From 
crocus-time to Christmas-time, with its scarlet 
barberries and holly-berries, the old garden works 
its wonders in its own mysterious way. 

To such a place, then, came the after-Easter 
robin. 

Digging and delving in happy confidence, this 
old lady was suddenly startled by the sound of a 
shot fired! 

"We are no older than we think we are," and 
old age held no place in the anatomy of this bird- 
protector as she straightened up and fled around 
the house in the direction of the noise, following 
hue and cry of her frightened birds. 

In wrath becoming a follower of that sturdy 



134 Quests of a Bird Lover 

fighter, St. Paul, she swiftly put to flight a bunch 
of small boys, hurling after them threats of evil 
if they again made war upon her song-birds. 

She looked high, she looked low, but no harm 
showed itself in tree or in shrub, but, working in 
her sunny kitchen the next morning, her glance 
was attracted by a dolorous-looking robin who 
came to rest upon the wheelbarrow. She chir- 
ruped to him, but he made no reply. She said: 
"You're a tardy bird ! Didn't you know it is an 
unusual season? Easter is late, but the flowers 
came early ! I've seen lots of birds, but very few 
of your kind until to-day. Usually the snows 
catch you here — now it is almost summer!" 

To all of which he answered not a word. Per- 
sistently he clung to the wheelbarrow all the long 
day. Night found him there, night left him there 
for the dusk-dawn to find him. Then the "Gar- 
den Lady" became anxious, and laid the case be- 
fore the "Judge," knowing it was his province to 
deduce from circumstantial evidence, and he 
proved his skill by answering: "The bird has evi- 
dently been injured; see the wing-feather sticking 
out at right angle from his body. We must feed 
him." 

So, each day, a goodly supply of rations was 
laid near the injured one, and though wholly un- 
able to use his wings, he managed to hop down by 
easy stages from the barrow to the ground to pick 



Gratitude of an After-Easter Robin 135 

up food, then to the well, where, on the curb, were 
kept dishes of water for the feathered folk, and 
where by actual count there came to bathe in one 
hour seventy-nine birds ! Then by slow and evi- 
dently painful degrees, the bird would hop back 
to his place on the wheelbarrow. 

He made no whimper of complaint, did the 
robin, but if ever anyone was lonely in pain it 
was he, and yet, it may be he was like a person 
I know who declares "Pain is company P For, 
pain is "company." When one suffers one wants 
solitude; to go down into the mysterious depths 
of it alone. But, when pain abates — "Why, why 
don't the neighbors come in?" So with the robin. 
When he began to stir about a little, he sought 
friends among the birds, but everyone abjured 
him in no uncertain tones I 

Discouraged by the incivilities of kith and kin, 
Mr. Redbreast then tried to scrape acquaintance 
with some young chicks scratching affably together 
about his chariot, but sympathy for lame folk 
went a-begging those days, and the chicks pecked 
at him viciously and routed him without delay. 
Back to his wheelbarrow, then, and his lonely 
convalescence. 

For fully three weeks after that first Easter 
Monday the injured robin came and went about 
the garden on his two eager little feet, "roosting" 
at night on his barrow, and, in fact, spending the 



136 Quests of a Bird Lover 

greater part of his time there. Finally he man- 
aged to fly up to the lowest branch of the elm, 
and gradually his flight grew longer, but each day 
he came to be fed by the "Judge" and the 
"Garden Lady," and I begin to think he had 
known her from the first day of his injury as his 
gallant defender — the one who had so valorously 
come to his rescue — else why return to the scene 
of attack? 

In any case, the bird showed every evidence of 
understanding that near her was to be found safe 
harbor, and hospitality, and he cast aside all fear. 
Then came a time of repairs about the old place. 
A sleeping porch was to be built, plumbing to be 
done, the house wired for electricity, drains made, 
etc., which brought noise and confusion into the 
quiet domain and scattered the birds like chaff 
before a high wind. When the work was finished 
and peace reigned, the "Garden Lady," with 
thankful heart, and time at last to spare, walked 
again among her flowers in "the cool of the day," 
sat upon her porch, and instantly her thought 
harked back to the pensioner, and she wondered 
to what other garden he had fled. 

But her thoughts were cut short by a rush of 
wings. Out from the big maple, a tree command- 
ing a full view of the porch, swept a robin. He 
alighted on a telephone wire, considered an in- 
stant, then straight down into the porch he flew, 



Gratitude of an After-Easter Robin 137 

sat himself upon the railing in front of the 
"Garden Lady," and gave cheerful greeting to the 
Good Samaritan he knew so well. 

Very still she sat (and I wish you could see 
how sweet she is!) and softly talked to the bird 
in tones of delight, trying to make plain her joy 
at having him again with her, and apologizing for 
the interruption of their friendship, explaining 
that she wanted sleep out-of-doors as well as he, 
and that she really liked the green tree-tops for 
curtains just as well, and the early dawns, and 
the breathless quiet just before morning breaks, 
and the delicate notes with which all his folks 
suggest to one another, "It's day! day! day!" 

He held his head on one side and looked wise 
enough! Then he talked back — in his way! 
"I'm glad if you do! I'm glad you've come out 
again! I couldn't stay with all those strange 
people about, and I missed you, and I've watched 
for you! and here we are together again, at last!" 
turning his head up and about, looking at her, 
listening to her replies, and watching with deep 
interest the swaying of her palm-leaf fan; and, 
perhaps, making promises of fealty for the future 
— who knows ? 

In any case, every evening of the summer that 
saw my "Garden Lady" on the porch saw also 
Mr. Robin Redbreast visiting her, conversing 
with her, enjoying himself immensely, if one 



138 Quests of a Bird Lover 

might believe in the fervor of the rolling 
"R's-r's-r's" of his song — "Che-r-reer-eer-err-up !" 
Will he come this summer, I wonder? Wait 
and see if a bird remembers that long to be 
grateful ! 



WANDERINGS OVER A LOUISIANA 
PLANTATION 

My lucky introduction to a Southern family, 
reconstructing its fallen fortunes, led to one long, 
lovely day among the "canebrakes" and thickets, 
and along untraveled roads, partly on foot, 
partly on a "tip-cart," under the hottest of South- 
ern suns. 

A brightening twilight of "Easter Monday" 
morning, and we were far afield. Pale blue smoke 
rose in straight columns from cabin chimneys, 
settling in long pencil lines against the faint green 
of far-away woods. Our road led first into the 
big forest, once a stately avenue cut for miles 
through giant trees. The trolling songs of pass- 
ing darkies rang out melodiously in the soft morn- 
ing air, and the ever-recurring mystery of spring 
was everywhere ! On cotton fields, and the huge 
live oaks; on delicate gray-green fronds of the 
swaying Spanish moss; on every weed and wild- 
flower, from big pink anemones to the fast falling 
snow of the "blood-roots," — everything pro- 
claimed a new miracle of life. Narrow ribbons 
of emerald hue ran across the black rows of earth 

139 



140 Quests of a Bird hover 

in the cotton fields, where plowmen had turned 
up the ground. 

The dark waters of the "bayous" were alive 
with turtles. Big, hard-backed, clumsy fellows 
sunned themselves on logs, but dropped "ker- 
plunk" into the water at the soft crunch of our 
wheels. 

Across the meadows (as if all "live houses" 
had withdrawn from its vicinity), tottered to a 
fall what my friend called an old "Reb-time 
house" — a relic of the war. "Hants," so the 
darkies said, "des flies roun' in de ole place like 
time ! Yaas 'urn, dey do !" Two-stories, un- 
painted, shutterless, door gaping, windows gone, 
sagging roof — such a sense of loneliness as we 
stand in the gallery yet upheld by high white pil- 
lars, in whose secure nooks the wrens and spar- 
rows are a-building — the sole sign of life about 
the place, if we except the unkempt "Damask 
rose" in an old rose garden where the yellowing 
marble dial notches off the slow hours. Beyond 
the "Brakes," a melancholy horn fitfully calls off 
the hounds from an all-night hunt. 

Perched safely on wheels we watch with shrink- 
ing interest a big "cottonmouth" wriggle himself 
across our dusty way, dragging his loathsome self 
down into the bayou. Cypress trees line the road 
and in among their thickness the great blue crane 



Wanderings Over a Louisiana Plantation 141 

croaks a welcome — or a rebuke — I hardly know 
which! O, for the nest of a crane! 

"John," demands my friend of our driver, 
"where do these birds nest? And what are their 
eggs like?" 

"Dunno, Miss! dunno!" 

We alight again and look high, and look low, 
— here on the edge of the bank we find the treas- 
ure ! — a beautifully colored egg, delicate green, 
splotched with brown. 

John rolls down from his seat on the "axle- 
tree." (Did I say we are drawn by oxen?) 

With staring eyes of interest and delight, he 
shouts : 

"Missy, dad sho' is a Easteh egg!" Then he 
climbs back to his perch, digs his "prod" into the 
steeds he much resembles, and we jog along 
through deep woods — on our way to "Honey 
Island." 

Not much of an "island" after all! A swampy 
bit of tufty land in the midst of a lagoon, but 
a-swarm with wild bees that pack the hollow of 
dead trees with pounds and pounds of sweetness. 
"Honey Island" passed and again piny woods, 
and through forests of "live oaks." 

Though the "cane-brakes" are often carelessly 
fired by hunters, a rank growth of weeds and 
briery vines quickly spring up, and here we are 



142 Quests of a Bird hover 

startled with a resounding "wherr-rr-rr P as 
numerous pa'tridges sweep up from their 
"wallows." 

"John" points out shady places near a black- 
berry thicket where spots half a yard across show 
that huge "rattlers" bask at high noon. A soli- 
tary buzzard flies up from the underbrush. Let's 
see the cause. No nest, hardly, as usual, but 
under the shelter of a fallen oak, huddled into a 
scared little bunch of downy white and black 
feathers, sit two solemnest of buzzard babies! 
Each one tries vainly to "hide his head under his 
wing, poor thing!" and — fearing his vociferous 
parent who "sits aloft" — we leave them in peace. 

Deer tracks are common along the sandy roads, 
and deer paths mislead in all directions, if one 
but steps into them. 

Bumblebees pay us a compliment along the 
way, and "John" cautiously discovers their 
hiding-place — a few feet across the ground in a 
round ball of cane leaves. It is as surprising and 
as ingenious a structure as any bird's nest I ever 
saw. This little round ball appears untenanted 
— perhaps "John" really did subdue, or put to 
flight the belligerent owners before he dragged it 
out to one side of the trail and left it for us to 
investigate. The opening into this mysterious 
object is all but invisible, and where, I am told, 
these nests are usually lined with shredded cane 



Wanderings Over a "Louisiana Plantation 143 

leaves, we now find one most daintily cushioned 
with a thin sheet of cotton batting plucked from 
the seeds of the Cottonwood tree. 

A few yards further on we come upon another 
nest. No bees about, we tap it lightly — at a safe 
distance — and wait to see who is at home. Out 
pops a little nose, and two tiny black eyes shine 
upon us, and, in a twinkling, disappear again, the 
opening shutting almost entirely after the occu- 
pant ! Another tap, and out ran a tiny red some- 
thing, but I never knew what ! A mouse — I think 
— and the question is, did the bumble-bees appro- 
priate the house of the mouse — or did the mouse 
usurp a domain of the bees? I shall never know ! 
but I fancy that the mouse is the architect in 
every case. 

Next we "flush" a wild turkey, who, in our slow 
progress, grows bold enough to warn her young- 
sters with strident note, "Lie low! keep quiet!" 
and they answer, in silly fashion, from various 
hiding-places. 

"John" points out curious piles of dry sticks 
laid against old tree trunks, and says, "Hunderds 
of 'em, Missy, in de cane-brakes, fo' an' five feet 
across." Nests, are these, of the wood rats, with 
upstairs, downstairs, and halls, and a wonderful 
hiding-place are its galleries for the big "cotton- 
mouth" moccasin. 

And now it grows toward the wane of day. 



144 Quests of a Bird Lover 

We have found no real nests after all — but our 
long day in the woods has not been without in- 
terest — has it? 

"Dat owl," declares John, "long be'n a-cryin' 
'wuk dun, er not dun — sun-down — time fo' to go 
'long home !' " And as we think he is thinking 
" 'bout de hants," back we go on our tracks. 

The woods are full of birds piping all manner 
of even-song. The clear notes of wood thrush, 
the ringing call of the evening grosbeak, song- 
sparrows innumerable — even the big blue-jays 
"jangle" a few notes not unmusical; orioles — on 
their way north — roll out their most cheerful 
melody. Then twilight falls — and out from the 
dark forest-gloom pierces the ineffable song of 
the "mocker." 

Someone has written this : "One cannot know 
bird music who has not listened to it at daybreak, 
or day's close, in the very heart of a Mississippi 
forest, or a Louisiana swamp." 

Perhaps it is true. 



"VIA DOLOROSA" 

"Sunnyside" has a mission for it is on "Ceme- 
tery Road." When I, casting about in my mind 
for a suitable and distinguishing name for this big, 
beautiful place on "Park Hill," decided felici- 
tously on "Sunnyside," and forthwith painted it 
in big red letters on my new bright and shining 
tin letter-box at the entrance gate, everybody 
laughed ! Two days later I laughed also, when I 
discovered the same name labeled on a bottle of 
"catchup" ! But in both cases the mission was 
the same — the enlivenment of mankind. 

"Sunnyside" — sloping stretches of green lawn, 
two acres, warm in the sunshine. Leaf shadows 
dancing here and there on the golden carpet; tall, 
old-fashioned red urns running over with vines 
and scarlet geraniums; a big white house with 
green blinds, and a white veranda whose floor 
holds cushions in gay colors, easy-chairs, and 
hammocks for the lazy folk; doors and windows 
flung wide, and thrashers calling sweetly from 
giant elms and maples, "Tir-o-lee, tir-o-lee, tir-o- 
lee," all the livelong day. 

The ground slopes finely back and front about 
i45 



146 Quests of a Bird Lover 

"Sunnyside," and the garden part, two more 
acres, is no less beautiful. A blue-grass pasture, 
with Timothy, the famous ninety-dollar Jersey 
cow, literally in clover, as well as blue grass. 
'Timothy" is pedigreed, and "Timothy's" fawn- 
colored kid-glove coat gets curried daily, and 
rivals "Clotilda's" sorrel coat in silken texture. 

And then, it's a funny old house — this "White" 
cottage at "Sunnyside," and before our advent, 
was always closed to the sun. 'Twould fade car- 
pets, and, as we bought the place furnished, I 
assure you the carpets were strong in color and 
immaculately clean, for the "auld wife" bid her 
"gude mon" pause at the door-sill, ushering him 
in at her pleasure, as she laid before his untidy 
feet one little braided mat, then another, and an- 
other, so on to his easy-chair, that he might not 
defile the carpets. Fancy putting down one foot 
and holding up the other until a spot was pre- 
pared upon which to plant it! 

Well, it isn't like that now! It's "Sunnyside" 
inside as well as out, the good old sun illuminating 
every cranny. To be sure, the "White" house 
will never again be as tidy as when I entered ; of 
this I hasten to assure the expectant and critical 
neighbors, for there is a lot more in life than just 
eternally and forever scrubbing to keep clean. 

If, in the psychological arrangement of affairs, 
from that wondrous bourne to which we are all 



"Via Dolorosa" 147 

trending, dear old Mr. W. returns sometimes in 
the moonlight to find his old cap hanging on the 
door-knob (just for company and with a quaint 
idea that it may lure him back, for I have many 
questions to ask of that land), fancy his delight 
and amazement at my charming disorder ! 

On Decoration-day "Sunnyside" was a benefi- 
ciary. It showered roses on two diminutive 
pickaninnies struggling through the heat on their 
way to Oak Hill, carrying a pitiful handful of 
wilted weeds. Said one, in answer to the query, 
u What is the name of your soldier?" "We ain't 
got no soldier, but Jim, he got a grabe!" And, 
emulating "Jim," I myself hunted up a "grabe" 
in this strange land — a grave of a good boy sol- 
dier of the Philippines, and decorated it with 
"Sunnyside" flags and flowers. 

This is only a small example of the feeling that 
prevails towards Oak Hill — a feeling of enthusi- 
asm, of protection, of deepest love towards the 
quiet inmates — a feeling that sends all the twelve 
thousand inhabitants of Lawrence, I am told, at 
least once a week, traveling the road to Oak Hill. 
"Why, it's part of home !" said one girl, and the 
lots are tended with reverent care, and much 
rivalry exists among some of these lot-owners as 
to whose shall look the best, and they display as 
much zeal as any hausfrau in house-cleaning 
time as to who shall get done first and show the 



148 Quests of a Bird Lover 

best results. The sentiment is unique, for there 
is no dread of the "burying-ground," and it is 
more like a cluster of little graves that surround 
the ivied church in an old English churchyard, 
where people walk about "visiting" from lot to 
lot, with the ones who lie beneath the sod, talking 
pf them, and I am not quite sure they do not talk 
to them. 

One old fellow takes pipe and book every 
Sabbath afternoon, and, in an easy-chair on his 
lot, smokes and reads and communes with the 
u auld wife" a year gone. People pass and repass, 
daily, hourly, and funerals galore; so small won- 
der I say to my little maid on Saturdays, "Hurry 
up, Susannah, and get the porch scrubbed and the 
cushions fixed before the funerals go by!" It 
must look nice and tidy and cheerful and inviting, 
so that, by the time they come to the foot of the 
hill, the "mo'ners" will begin to sit up and take 
notice. 

"Sunnyside" is vindicating its name, just like 
the "catchup." Folks stop and stare, and, leav- 
ing the "Via Dolorosa," skirt the western part 
of "Sunnyside" by Haskell Road, so that they 
may longer take in its cheerful aspect. I see 
them, and know it's "livenin' " things up 
"amazin' " ! The many lamps at "Sunnyside" 
wink mellowly at night through its thirty-two 
windows, and the many passers repeatedly say, 



"Via Dolorosa" 149 

"How good it is to see your light shine out." 
"But are you not afraid, all alone?" "Well," I 
answer, "I think I am; at least I just get ready 
to be afraid when something flits through my 
mind, 'Fear thou not, for I am with thee.' " 
"Let your light so shine," and it shines — sunshine, 
starshine, moonshine, out at "Sunnyside," and 
a-many folk are comforted. 

On the lawn at "Sunnyside" are wide-spreading 
elm-trees, tall maples, pine, spruce, cedars, um- 
brella-trees, and, running along the curving drive, 
stand some thirty odd Yucca palms, with twice as 
many shafts of bell-shaped, creamy blossoms, 
showing ghostly in the moonlight. 

The master of the garden has toiled early and 
late, seeding, sowing, digging, delving, with a pair 
of hands all unused to toil but with a pen — his 
hands brown, his pride booming over the marvel- 
ous results. What matter if the "garden truck" 
has cost this amateur "farmer man" twenty times 
as much in the growing as in the buying? It has 
taught him the secret of the loamy earth— the 
unquenchableness of life, typical of the resurrec- 
tion, folded away in the tiny seed that awakens 
at the touch of the warm fingers of the sun. 

The birds at "Sunnyside" are numberless, the 
crow-blackbirds most of all in evidence, walking 
proudly about in the nodding white clover, with 
a "chip on their shoulder" for any bird who inter- 



I 5° Quests of a Bird Lover 

feres with them. In the cedar by my window a 
brown thrasher has her nest. To reach it, think- 
ing to delude me, she wearily drops to the ground 
beneath the tree, picks up an imaginary crumb, 
then flits up among the dense branches, by the 
trembling of which alone showing to me her way. 
Then I peep in and see her contentedly brooding 
her "two brown babies," not nearly as pretty as 
she herself in her cinnamon-colored coat. 

In an old stove-pipe in the carriage-house a tiny 
wren made her nest, and when I, after days of 
waiting to u snap-shot" them, finally climbed a 
ladder and turned my camera on them in the nest, 
in a trice out flew the three youngsters at lightning 
speed, and I caught but the empty nest. 

On the lightning-rod above the house at 
"Sunnyside" is a mirror-like silver ball. Here, 
on a Sabbath afternoon I watched for an hour a 
vain sparrow who had become entranced with his 
own reflection and exhausted himself finally in 
the wearisome delight of keeping himself in mid- 
air on fluttering wings, that he might enjoy the 
picture. Sparrows gathered on the ridge-poles 
settled themselves on the lightning-rod itself 
above and below the enthusiast, watching him 
with eager curiosity, for he had gone quite daft, 
flying about and about the ball, touching his beak 
affectionately to his own reflection, and twittering 
in ecstasy. The sunlight struck sharply on the 



"Via Dolorosa" 151 

ball, and we from the ground could see the reflec- 
tion in it of the body of the sparrow. What won- 
der, then, that the bird itself, so close, should be 
deluded ! Utter weariness at last caused him to 
leave, but with one or two returns, until his de- 
parture became final. 

Orioles rear their babies in hair-woven pockets 
swung from the elm-tree tops; golden-winged 
woodpeckers carve their homes in the dying 
branches; cardinal birds nest in the cedars, and 
one and all help things out for the weary folk 
who, heavy-hearted, pass by "Sunnyside." 



WILLING CAPTIVES 

A cardinal bird, a humming bird, and a parrot : 
with which shall I begin? 

So little there is to say of the latter he shall 
come first. 

A shady old street on the outskirts of a South- 
ern city, a street bordered on either side with old 
cabins smothered in jasmine vine. Here I strolled 
interestedly. 

"H' are yeh? H' are yeh? H' are yeh? 
Yah! Yah! Yah! Yah!" A lot of rattling, 
croaking calls gleefully followed. 

I thought of nothing, or no one, but a picka- 
ninny, and of course his bold hail was not meant 
for me. Yet the words and the laughter followed 
me persistently until I turned about, and sought 
the owner of the voice, in wonder ! No little 
darkies near, no bird in the tree, a silent, dreamy, 
half-asleep neighborhood, and then, around the 
corner of a cabin, hurriedly scrambled the author 
of the summons — a splendid, vigorous parrot 
tethered by a long, light chain to the ignominy 
of a chicken coop ! His bowings and scrapings 

152 



Willing Captives 153 

when he found I was really coming across the 
grass were those of a courtier ! His garments 
were resplendent, green, and gold, and crimson, 
and he shouted out such delighted laughter that 
I began to feel that something must be very odd 
about my appearance ! 

"Hail fellow, well met" was I to him — it 
showed in his eager greetings. 

Solitude was not to his mind, and he danced 
from one foot to the other as I crossed the rick- 
ety back porch to knock and ask might I make 
acquaintance with the foreigner. Not a soul at 
home; so, in admiration of an unusual bird intelli- 
gence, I sat me down safely beyond his reach. 

He strutted pompously, as near as might be, 
looked me wisely over, made a few unintelligible 
comments, and then launched forth into a reper- 
toire that was not to be despised, outdoing "Chan- 
ticleer," himself with the lusty crows he eased his 
throat of! Followed, then, the motherly cluck- 
ing of a brooding old hen, the "cheep ! cheep !" of 
young chicks, the call of the crow, the harsh 
meowing of a cat, and peremptory demands for 
"Is-erW /5-erl?" ending in loud guffaws. Chin 
in hand I watched and listened, appreciatively, 
as the comedian bowed, and bowed to me again, 
and yet again, becoming convinced, at last, that 
parrot language was, after all, a thing to be be- 
lieved in. Finally I rose to go. 



154 Quests of a Bird Lover 

"You nice old chap," I said, "I've got to go," 
and I backed slowly away. The bird strained to 
the end of his leash, and to my utter amazement 
croaked out the words "Don't go! Don't go. 
O, don't goV 

And I retraced my steps — dropping weakly to 
the grass — expecting anything now from that 
weird old bird! Delighted at my return, he 
promptly launched out into a repetition of his 
whole performance, hastily jumbling his names 
together, and I finally left him angrily humping 
himself about in the grass and shouting, "Don't 
go ! O, don't go !" as uncanny an object as might 
be seen — a bunch of ruffled feathers from which 
issued the voice of a naughty boy, fervent with 
pious ejaculations, or saucy with barnyard noises. 

"De ole man dun had him way back," a young 
negress told me. "Belong to his ole mistis' in 
Mizzoury." 

Probably he had seen war-times, and acquired 
the language of camps ; but in entertaining me he 
had certainly shown himself to be "a perfect 
gentleman." 

Can I call a cardinal bird ever a "willing cap- 
tive"? Even if experience has given him naught 
of leafy nooks, or of wide flights, does not some- 
thing inherited make his brave heart aspire to 
wind-lashed tree-tops for the outpouring of his 
song? Surely, surely, and though he was too 



Willing Captives 155 

young to know any better than to be tempted by 
a voice, were not his eight years of life behind 
bars saddened sometimes by a longing for the 
bright blue of the sky? 

I fear me it was. But "Aunt Jeannette," be- 
reft and lonely, "toled" him into her window by 
the call of a neighbor's bird (caged), and in ex- 
cuse said: "Everything I loved has been taken 
from me : husband, daughter. I think I ought to 
be left to enjoy some one thing I love." Thus, 
cardinal Number 2 was caught and caged in his 
babyhood of dove-colored garments. A common 
practice, this caging of song-birds not so many 
years back, especially of the cardinal; but to-day, 
well protected by legislation, these gallant fellows 
in fed confidently rear their families among the 
pink or crimson of rambler-roses that run over 
all porches, and feed also with the chickens — so 
homely have become their habits. One said of 
"Aunt Jeannette's" bird, "If I live longer than 
Jeannette I will free that bird." Perhaps, be- 
cause of that resolution, she really has weathered 
the years long after that happy day. Gay in 
adult plumage, the bird was substitute for "folk" 
to his owner long years, loving no one but her, 
allowing no familiarity from any but herself, 
learning alone the trick of singing, but not acquir- 
ing the dance habit known to me of another 
(sooty) Cincinnati cardinal, whose sharp ears 



156 Quests of a Bird Lover 

distinguished the hand of his owner as he un- 
latched the hall door, and who immediately began 
to croon and dance until the old man laid his 
white head close against the bars — and O, the 
joy of that bird! 

Eight years, and more, and it was January, and 
u Aunt Jeannette" left bird and all behind her to 
journey to far-away shores. Her "things" scat- 
tered like chaff before the wind (in usual fashion) , 
and at last to the one who had promised him a 
freedom he came as a legacy. O happy day! 

Too cold just then to free an indoor bird, whose 
slow, untried wings would be to him a problem. 
So once more he waited, showing small interest in 
new surroundings, knowing no tricks, caring little 
for anything but the scratching of "stub" pens on 
a little writing table beneath his cage, a sound that 
would always draw him to the side of his cage 
to peer out at the mysterious twists and turns of 
the pen with all the curiosity of a prospective 
writer. 

March, April, May — and in the sunny month 
of flowers came the day of liberty. High upon 
a step-ladder was placed the cage, in the midst of 
a garden; the door was raised, and the way was 
open. 

"Now, what might that mean?" he pondered. 
"Let's investigate." To the door and back again, 



Willing Captives 157 

repeatedly, peering out to test the reality of no 
bars. 

No, nothing stood between him and the big 
out-of-doors he had so long wondered about, and 
trusting the Providence that had provided such 
an opportunity, he spread his unaccustomed wings 
and flew heavily to a small tree, rested, preening 
himself, caught the attention of two "kinfolks," 
who, uttering liquid notes "Whee-yox\\ Whee- 
you !" swung down to him. 

I wonder if they were notes of encouragement? 
I wonder if they said, "Fear not! Come, and 
we will show you!" for, all willingly, he joined 
them, following into an elm-tree, and there pour- 
ing forth a jubilant song of freedom. 

The whole summer saw him coming and going 
about the house, in the trees, in the garden, easily 
recognizable by a split in his bill — obtained no 
one knew how, during his days of imprisonment. 

I have been told the days of a cardinal's life 
are many — the years mounting up to twenty-five. 
If so, what joy has been that of "Aunt Jean- 
nette's" cardinal for at least fifteen years! 

And now for the humming-birds — a roomful of 
them, six, uncaged; a garden full of them, fifteen 
or twenty, homing among the graceful colum- 
bines. How swift their flight ! How small their 
form ! How exquisite their color .! How friendly 



158 Quests of a Bird Lover 

their ways! They will not speed off should you 
be delving among roots quite near them, as they 
poise above the flowers, radiant jewels in quiver- 
ing heat-waves, busy as any bee in their honey 
quest. They will even follow you, bent on pilfer- 
ing should you rob the garden of its bloom, even 
as they followed me half way through the campus 
but yesterday, my arms laden with old-fashioned 
coral honeysuckle, pink wigelia, and dancing, nod- 
ding columbines, for red is above all else "their 
color," and I almost dislocated my neck in trying 
to watch the gauzy-winged creatures humming 
fearlessly behind my shoulder. 

Stand flowers in the open window; they will 
draw the humming-birds to the feast. Summer 
time and June time, scent and color abroad every- 
where, and the iridescent wings of those honey- 
seeking birds flash through the air. Watch them 
probe among the velvet petals of a scarlet gera- 
nium! Not a blossom is unvisited, or a petal 
crushed, so daintily do they feed ! And then how 
they dust their quivering wings with gold when 
they fold themselves deep into the yellow hearts 
of the "trumpet flowers" ! Ah, who could entrap 
them? 

Well-a-day! Perhaps it was not "entrapping" 
to give them the freedom of a whole house — for 
they are among the most confiding, the most easily 
tamed of all the birds, and show no disposition 



Willing Captives 159 

to escape when they learn that one is a "friend." 
But I guess the new laws of birddom regulate all 
that, these days. 

From a small colony maintained in a certain 
home one little female was carefully put into a 
collar-box and taken to new quarters. Without 
delay she made herself at home — perching upon 
sticks, and quickly learning the limits of her new 
apartments; she was fed on honey by dipping 
one's finger into the liquid, holding up the hand, 
and down she would dart to alight and refresh 
herself. If by chance she wandered out through 
an open window, "home" soon brought her back 
in again. Flowers brought in from the garden 
also tempted her to explore, and for six months 
she was a much-loved, well-cared for visitor ; then, 
when migrating days arrived, she was given her 
real and lasting freedom, that she might join the 
mighty army winging its way, a thousand miles, 
to tropic climes. 

But what if that little, Gray Lady fell by the 
way? What if wings, measured by too short 
flights, failed of their task? 

Rather think we back to old apple orchards, 
with their gray, weather-beaten branches, saddled 
with the most beautiful lichen-covered nests of 
our small friends — the "hummers." To June 
days of delight when one watches the proud owner 
of the home and when one makes none too free 



160 Quests of a Bird Lover 

with the stronghold — lest the "man of the house" 
descend in his wrath (much too great for one so 
small!), and smite one "hip and thigh" with his 
very trusty weapon — his long, swordlike bill ! 



MY WAY OF LEARNING ABOUT BIRDS 

"All spark lings of small beady eyes 
Of birds i and side-long glances rise 
Wherewith the jay hints tragedies" 

When one, living near college precincts, finds, 
in desultory wanderings o'er hill and dale, sundry 
bird-nests that have been deserted, nests holding 
yet a tiny bunch of eggs, one is apt to wonder if 
the method of bird-study in said colleges may not 
be improved upon. 

Witness the closely hidden nest of the song- 
sparrow, deep, deep sunken in a drift of sweet- 
scented honeysuckles. Comes a curious crowd of 
"Normalities," for instance, and, following their 
visit, their peering eyes, lo! a frightened bird — 
an abandoned nest. 

Witness a dove's nest in the thorny security of 
a young spruce-tree ; too low down by far, and so 
open to inspection for all who go by. Two white 
eggs — deserted. 

Witness the wood-thrush, after a brave fight 
for her home, leaving her eggs and making a new 
nest in a securer quarter. 

In the hey-day of life — college life — one's 
161 



1 62 Quests of a Bird Lover 

pulses and ambitions will not, usually, halt long 
enough for true bird-study. Most bird-study is 
done in the classroom, the student learning about 
the bird from a biological standpoint. Then fol- 
lows out-of-door work, and blest, seemingly, is 
he (or she) who, trailing rapidly through the 
woods in the dancing days of spring, when leaves 
clap their hands in answer to the frolicsome 
breeze, when blossoms float in waltz-measure 
through the warm, light air, thrice blest, appar- 
ently, is the bird-enthusiast who, catching flying 
glimpse of bird-wing, enumerates the largest num- 
ber in his notebook! Why, that is only a begin- 
ning — only like the glimpse of a strange face in 
a passing crowd! 

A "personally conducted party," crashing 
through the underbrush at the heels of a "pro- 
fessor," cannot but have the effect of sending the 
wood birds flying into the treetops, where they 
surely must laugh at such careless invasion of 
nature's solitudes. 

It is not an easy thing to say just how this one, 
or that, should pursue a course of bird-study, or 
in what manner they may best come to a proper 
understanding of the ways and words of our 
feathered folk. 

Of one thing alone I am sure: real bird-study 
may not be done in crowds. A "party of one" is 



My Way of Learning About Birds 163 

the best number, at very most of two — and that's 
two too many! 

To each of us come such differing opportuni- 
ties for making acquaintance with the birds, and 
under such different circumstances. In some 
cases the bird must be hunted through the fields 
and meadows, in other cases the bird comes to 
you. Honor is thrust upon you ! We might any 
of us, for instance, study bird books for endless 
months, we might plunge head over ears into bird 
dictionaries and abstruse ornithological works 
full of Latin names quite unintelligible to most of 
us, and, after all, have only a knowledge of the 
general appearance of the different birds, of 
where, and when, and how they live and lay their 
eggs and rear their young. All of this, of course, 
is very good and very necessary, but yet it fails to 
make us personally acquainted with the winged 
brethren. All our knowledge of birds acquired 
from books and preparing us, as it does, for the 
reception and recognition of the different varieties 
of birds as they come among us, does not estab- 
lish any social relation with them or give us the 
entree to their private affairs as they transact 
them in our gardens or in the woods day after 
day, with all the individuality shown in the differ- 
ing ways of our human neighbors on either side 
of us. While birds of the same class have similar 



164 Quests of a Bird Lover 

general traits, a little study of them will discover 
to us individual birds of pronounced character 
and of many variable traits. 

For the encouragement of those who have not 
access to bird literature, I frankly state that 
nearly all my own bird observations were made 
before I ever saw a bird book. Years of en- 
forced idleness will teach anyone a good deal 
about outdoor life, provided they have a window 
that opens into the treetops and overlooks a gar- 
den. One who is thus privileged needs only to 
look outward to find companions innumerable, 
little folk who bring to the watcher of their ways 
jollity and good cheer, ever-deepening interest, 
respect, and wonder at the marvelous instinct and 
reason ordering the happy lives of our feathered 
friends. 

So you see in the very beginning of bird-study 
there is required an infinite patience, a willingness 
to sit or lie and wait and watch through hours, 
days, weeks, years for the development of bird 
plans in love-making, in nest-building, in training 
their families, and in migrating. When once we 
begin our investigation, new things come under 
our eye each day, and the more we see and learn 
of birds, the more there still is to be learned. 

A friend who had listened to my enthusiastic, 
if prosy, dissertations on birds, said, "Well, I've 
looked and looked at birds, and I never see 'em 



My Way of Learning About Birds 165 

do a thing but fly!" That was something, any- 
how, for had she taken that simple "flying" for 
a nucleus and watched the wing motion of all the 
birds she saw "fly," how quickly would she have 
discovered the differing flight among the birds! 
Direct, as flies the oriole, bluejay, crow, cardinal 
bird, kingfisher, and the robin, who one and all 
know precisely where they want to go and accord- 
ingly go straight to it ; undulating, billowy, as the 
goldfinches, bluebirds, woodpeckers sail through 
the air; circling, as anyone who will look for a 
moment may see how swallows and night-hawks 
fly around in tireless monotony. The swift has a 
fluttering flight, but moves in the same circling 
rings made by the swallows. Sparrows seem to 
fly with difficulty, small as they are, as does that 
most cheery of birds, the bobolink, and also the 
meadow larks. The keel-tailed blackbird steers 
himself by his tail, which he uses as rudder; the 
humming-bird flies in a long curve, but still as if 
In direct flight, for she straightway hits the mark 
she aims at, be it insect or flower. Owls fly 
heavily yet softly. All the warblers, the chicadee, 
and the wrens are restless, and flit about in a 
most uncertain way. The pewee sits and medi- 
tates, and from time to time darts into the air 
after an insect, in short flight. So, had my friend 
gone a little further with her observation, this 
much she would have discovered, at least. 



1 66 Quests of a Bird hover 

To begin our study by learning to know the 
bird song seems naturally the easiest way, but to 
me it has ever been the most difficult. So many 
birds have similar notes. Birds are so in the 
habit of catching a note from each other, and 
until my anxious eyes light upon a glint of red- 
gold I am never yet quite sure that it is only the 
beautiful Baltimore oriole sounding his call in a 
few notes stolen from the cardinal's repertoire. 
While the oriole's song is less bold and loud than 
the cardinal's, its notes are very similar, and are 
rolled out of the mouth of the little singer like a 
jolly drinking-song. If one begins to identify 
birds by their song, it is best to be awake and 
listening before the earliest peep of dawn, either 
in bed or out of it. If the latter, then creep 
silently out to the woods and step quietly along 
to a leaf-hidden nook and there find a seat, and 
though you may be drabbled with dew and half 
asleep and strongly inclined to declare the game 
is not worth the early candlelight by which you 
dressed, the first soft, sweet bird-note that sounds 
will reawaken your enthusiasm. 

After the morning chorus is over, you will find 
it an easy matter to follow quietly any bird you 
may select of the many about you, and, thus 
watching him as he goes about his affairs, you 
soon learn to know the song that is his. The 
call notes of birds are very different from their 



My Way of Learning About Birds 167 

song notes, notes of alarm, notes of warning, and 
the coaxing note of a lover. After a little study 
of them you will quickly be able to distinguish 
your bird by his own peculiar notes. 

In our study of birds, we must first bring to it 
a great patience; second, a great interest; and, 
thirdly, a love for these little friends of ours. 
Hearing the songs of the birds leads us to look 
for them individually. 

Every day the birds will show to your watching 
eyes some new way. Nearly every day will bring 
to you a new bird and a new song, especially if 
you are able to go out into the woods and, in deep, 
leafy shadows, sit for hours at a time with no one 
to call upon you but the birds. A field-glass when 
you go into the woods is a necessary thing, or a 
good opera-glass. I have found the latter more 
satisfactory for home study, where the birds are 
near at hand, but when one must needs turn his 
eyes to the tops of towering maples, or when one 
is interested in the "hang-bird nest," a-making in 
the swinging tips of high elm branches, then the 
stronger glass is the better, as it brings the bird- 
home so much nearer. 

The bird-song at evening is no less enjoyable 
than the morning song, for by four o'clock in the 
afternoon every bird is again in full voice, and, 
led by the robin, they warble and whistle and trill 
until the last ray of sunlight fades. Bluebirds, 



1 68 Quests of a Bird hover 

thrushes, cardinals, sparrows, robins, and finches 
are all heard in the evening chorus, and when they 
finally leave off, one by one, the robin is almost 
the last to be heard, and after this, late in the 
cool night, the whippoorwill voices his complaint 
and the owls hoot. 

The bluebird awakens almost at the same mo- 
ment with the robin, and joins her plaintive notes 
to his. 

The tufted titmouse, sitting always alone in the 
pear-tree top, adds his comment, "Sweet-oh, 
sweet-oh, sweet-oh." No bird has a sweeter, 
more persistent song, and we hear him day after 
day as he reiterates his words and disports him- 
self among the branches, his gray coat, ruddy 
sides, and splendid crest making him a conspicu- 
ous fellow. 

Now the sparrows all wake up and incessantly 
chirp and twitter; the chimney swallows come 
rising and circling from sooty depths; the wood- 
pewee sounds her soft note, the oriole whistles, 
the bluejays squawk harshly, the woodpeckers 
drum, the catbirds sing melodiously, and the ten- 
der voice of the mourning dove is heard in gentle 
cooings. 

The musical notes of the thrushes are plainly 
distinguishable, u Tru-o-lee, tru-e-ly, tru-o-lee, 
tru-o-lee." 

The wrens, warblers, vireos, and finches all 



My Way of Learning About Birds 169 

join in a gay chorus of song, and above them all 
sounds loudly and clearly the ever-to-be-depended- 
upon robin, and even louder than his notes rings 
the cardinal's song, for by this time he is in full 
voice. His notes seem endless in number, and he 
sings with marvelous flexibility. 

Among the thrushes last summer we had a 
visitor in a bird that is not usually seen on our 
lawn — a bird who usually keeps to the woods. 
Our attention was first caught by his stately way 
of crossing the grass. "Why," we said, u that 
bird walks; he doesn't hop like the others !" And 
he did walk, and that very boldly, for he came 
quite up to the steps of the veranda to get the 
crumbs we were scattering. What fine airs he 
gave himself, to be sure! Walking was, in his 
opinion, a step or two higher in the bird-world 
than the common way of hopping, and he dis- 
ported himself proudly among his cousins, the 
thrushes, for most of the morning. It was a curi- 
ous sight, and until we noted him more carefully, 
turning our glass from his high-stepping feet to 
his plumage of olive brown and his ruddy cap, it 
never occurred to us that he was the oven-bird 
(so named from his nest), or "golden-crowned 
thrush," as he really was. He never came again, 
and we never found his nest. No doubt it was in 
the vicinity, but, among the crowd of thrushes, we 
gave him little thought until he had departed. 



170 Quests of a Bird Lover 

Had we more quickly taken the hint from his 
unusual way of walking, we might have followed 
up his lordship to that securely-hidden home. 

I have been asked, Do birds of the same species 
have a different song repertoire and different 
qualities of voice? That is, may we find a cer- 
tain robin with musical powers beyond his neigh- 
bors? 

To this I would answer, yes, and yes again, and 
we find it's true in many different species. Car- 
dinals, with an unusual range ; wrens, whose songs 
differ in length, and tone; orioles with individual 
notes and tones, and "mockers," with flute notes, 
or the notes of a violin; and all the melody that 
issues from feathered throats seems attuned by 
air, and blue sky, and whispering leaves ! 

One does not need to go far abroad to learn 
bird ways. Even in a city the birds come to us. 
The sociable sparrows, for instance, who lazily 
make one big nest that they share generously with 
each other, laying their eggs in it indiscriminately 
and by this haphazard way securing young fledge- 
lings always in the nest, the warmth of whose 
bodies helps to hatch the eggs later deposited 
there — nursery economics. Snowbirds and juncos 
are also in the parks in winter; occasionally the 
woodpeckers, sometimes song-sparrows, tree- 
sparrows, or even goldfinches. In summer the 
parks are almost as full of birds as are the woods. 



My Way of Learning About Birds 171 

The birds who are the earliest to nest are the 
first to drop out of the ranks as singers, though 
some birds are undaunted and sing all the time. 
They mostly find it unwise to make much noise in 
the vicinity of their homes, and as the require- 
ments of their mate or her little family keep the 
male bird close by, his song is necessarily cut 
short. In case he must, out of the joy of his 
heart, sometimes indulge himself in song, be sure 
he will take himself in another direction ere he 
begins. 

The robins and bluebirds are among the 
earliest nest-builders, and while the bluebird is 
more silent, the robin finds it impossible to keep 
from talking quite all the time, and at twilight 
he is very apt to perch himself in a distant tree 
and warble over the story of the day. 

When our bird begins to pick up strings or 
grasses or pieces of bark, and especially when we 
see a male bird feeding the female, we may be 
pretty sure there is a nest a-building somewhere, 
and it behooves us to go quietly and watch closely 
the way taken by the bird when she flies off with 
a mouthful of material. If it be a robin, look in 
maple trees, apple or elm trees about fifteen feet 
from the ground, as they rarely build very high. 
If a thrush in her tawny dress comes under your 
eye, look among the bushes, low down, or even on 
the ground; if a bluebird, look about you for cozy 



172 Quests of a Bird hover 

nooks in the decayed trees or stumps, for mainly 
the bluebird nests in a hollow. If a woodpecker 
flits before your glass in nesting-time, watch where 
he alights and you will probably discover his ex- 
cavation in a tree where the young are to be 
reared; for swallows, look under the eaves in a 
barn, or in the chimney. On the ground you will 
find, if you are sufficiently clever, the nest of the 
oven-bird — a nest with one tiny door, by the way; 
the meadow larks nest on the ground; also the 
bobolinks, whippoorwill, night-hawk, and some 
of the sparrows. The nest of the black and white 
creeper is at the foot of a tree. 

To all of these rules there are, of course, excep- 
tions, and there is where one finds most pleasure 
in the study of bird ways — to come across new 
and curious exceptions to the general rule, as 
one is sure to do in a close study of them, for 
birds have many vagaries. In any old orchard 
we may find goldfinch nests, yellow-bird nests, 
catbirds, robins, and almost any kind of tree-nest- 
ing bird. Catbirds choose, mostly, about our 
home, the lilac bushes or the Osage hedge; and 
in our maple trees the kingbird makes his home, 
and occasionally the humming-bird. The cow- 
bird, as you know, makes no nest, but always lays 
in the nest of other birds, while the wood-pewee 
generally nests in high trees. Last year snowed 



My Way of Learning About Birds 173 

us a departure from her usual ways in her attempt 
to utilize the woodpecker's home. 

The gay cardinal is sociable, and makes his 
nest comparatively low, in vines and shrubs, — 
wherever he chooses to build, and is especially 
fond of building in a rose trellis or grape-arbor 
that I know of, and ever and always uses, in the 
making of his nest, pieces of newspaper. He will 
pick it up from the street or help himself to what 
lies torn about the garden or on the porch, and 
will even carry it a great distance in order to 
utilize it. 

After the young birds have flown from the 
nests, it is worth any one's while to take the nests 
down and examine them, thus finding out the 
different material used in the building of them. 
Some of them are plastered, as a mason works; 
some of them are woven, as in the case of the 
oriole, humming-bird, and vireo. Some are the 
mere scratching together of sticks on the ground, 
as the whippoorwill and night-hawk; others are 
carelessly made of sticks in bush or tree, as the 
dove or catbird builds, and some show artistic 
ideas, as in lichen-decorated nests. 

Before we reach the period when we are free 
to examine the nests, however, we must note the 
rearing of the young birds, their first flight, and 
the actions of the parents during incubation. It 



174 Quests of a Bird Lover 

would be a difficult matter to merely find a nest- 
ful of eggs, and, without seeing the owner there- 
of, decide to whom it belonged, for the eggs of 
birds seem sometimes to have little relation to 
the coloring of their feathers, the very darkest 
and plainest of birds laying the whitest eggs. 
This we may learn by peeping into the nests of 
birds of whose identity we are sure, when they 
are off the nest, or by referring to any collection 
of birds' eggs at our command, or by studying 
the colored plates of eggs. 

For instance, the eggs of the little screech-owl 
are pinkish white; the tiny eggs of the brilliant 
humming-bird are also white, and oval in form; 
eggs of the marsh-hawk, white ; eggs of saw-whet 
owl, white; mourning dove's eggs, white. The 
egg of the oriole is striking, as is his plumage — 
pinkish, with dark red-brown streaks and blotches. 
The eggs of the thrush bear no relation to his 
coloring, as they are gray-blue. The egg of the 
cardinal is a pale pinkish color, and is spotted 
with brownish dots. The egg of the bluejay is 
a pinkish yellow, deeper pink at the large end and 
thickly mottled with olive green, showing, of 
course, not a single tint of the pigments that 
color the feathers of the bird itself. Thus it is 
with all the birds; we find nearly always a di- 
versity of color in the eggs and the feathers. 

When the young birds break the shell (or have 



My Way of Learning About Birds 175 

it broken for them, as in some cases when they are 
slow to emerge), the time for watching the do- 
mestic life of a bird is at hand. If we are for- 
tunate enough to have the nests within reach of 
our eyes or our opera-glass in our garden or 
shrubbery, this is a matter of easy and pleasur- 
able accomplishment; but if we must journey to 
the woods day after day, it requires great perse- 
verance, for we must be on hand every day there- 
after so as not to lose anything that passes. Very 
early in the morning, too, for birds are much 
earlier risers than are we. Nesting-time, birds 
display great individuality, and if you have be- 
come their trusted friend they will show you all 
their pretty secrets, as just between you two, and 
"don't ever tell!" 

Our earliest spring bird not counting the car- 
dinal who is with us all winter and sings his spring 
song the very first of all, is the tufted titmouse, 
who comes quietly into the garden, and before 
we have seen him he tunes up and confidently 
informs us that life is "Sweet-oh, sweet-oh, 
sweet-oh," and he repeats this hour after hour 
for days at a time, to be soon joined by the 
bluebird, who announces, "Here-I-be, here-I-be, 
here-I-be," and then we know there is no ques- 
tion as to spring! 

But — and here is the crux of the whole matter 
— if you do not love a bird — you may as well 



176 Quests of a Bird hover 

not hunt for one. The study of it would be only 
dry-as-dust-work. But if the song of a bird is in 
your heart, if the marvelous colors of the birds 
stir your sense of beauty, if your own troubled 
soul can, and ever will rise on wings of gladness 
from earthly woes, then in you will be, and is 
"kinship" with the birds, and I write of one whose 
life was music but in whose throat was no song 
and whose one uttered wish of heavenly places 
was: "If, there, I can only sing!" 



A BUZZARD'S NEST 

"Don't the buzzards ooze around up there jest like 
they've alius done?" 

He's not pretty to look at — the buzzard, he's 
black, and brown, and ugly; neither has he the 
gift of song; nor are his feeding habits to be com- 
mended, but, if you run across his babies you 
will be surprised. He lives all around, and about 
in the country of Ohio — and there is a winding 
old road that leads to "Riley" just west of Ox- 
ford, where, along its clover-scented borders, I 
have watched many times these great, heavily 
flying birds rise from the under brush on the bank 
of the creek and flap themselves across the fields 
uttering loud, discordant cries; but, search as we 
might (and hunting for a buzzard's nest is a very 
precarious business), we were long in discovering 
its locality. 

The bright eyes of two small farmer lads first 
found the nest in question; they shared the "find" 
with a certain western "Thoreau," scientist, 
philosopher and country-man who surprises all of 
Nature's secrets, and he in turn led me into knowl- 
edge. 

177 



178 Quests of a Bird Lover 

Far, far over the fields and down into the deep 
woods, and there, under the exposed roots of an 
old oak tree, we found the nest. When we 
reached the place the old bird was at home, but, 
evidently suspicious of our intentions, she raised 
herself and sailed into the air, not alone with in- 
tent to retreat, but also to protect her home, and 
taking, of course, the offensive. It required no 
little maneuvering to keep out of her way, and 
only after she had left the vicinity could we come 
close enough to examine the nest and its contents. 
Here we found, snugly hidden under the roots of 
the tree, in a deep hollow and lying on the bare 
ground, two large eggs, in size like those of a 
turkey, but not quite so pointed at the smaller 
end. The larger end was splotched with dark 
brownish-red marks, and, elsewhere, the eggs were 
covered with very light speckles — not at all an 
ugty egg. 

To the fascinating spot we journeyed again, and 
again all through May and well into June, only 
to be cheated at last from a sight of the birds 
emerging from the eggs, for, in an interval from 
one Friday, until Sunday morning, the eggs 
hatched, about the third day of June. On our 
first visit after this event we found the mother 
bird covering her young, and, only after much 
prodding with a stick was she induced to leave 



A Buzzard's Nest 179 

them, threatening us, as before, with divers 
things. There, in the gloom of the almost hidden 
home, lay two of the whitest, softest, chick-birds 
ever hatched. Downiest of bantlings were they, 
like balls of cotton, and smaller than two newly 
hatched chickens — just two white splotches on 
the ground, inert, and quite incapable of holding 
up their heads or moving in any way. Our sur- 
prise was great at discovering the young to be 
of such singular purity of plumage. The tiny 
birds, though downy like young chicks, had none 
of the activity of the latter, but lay so still one 
might have thought them lifeless had not a little 
poking stirred them into uneasy motion. 

From time to time we revisited the nest, to 
note the progress of growth. They developed 
slowly, but by July 1st they had reached the size 
of a two-thirds grown duck and still retained 
their white plumage — a wondrous contrast to 
the parent birds with their glossy purplish black 
feathers and fierce red throats. The nest — the 
home, rather, for there was no nest — we always 
approached with great precaution as one hardly 
cared to encounter the old birds, and yet hesitated 
to lose the chance so rare of studying the develop- 
ment of the bantlings. As they grew they became 
active and belligerent, and would hiss loudly, 
like scolding geese, at our approach, and show 



180 Quests of a Bird hover 

fight when prodded with sticks. This was done 
in order to force them to rise, that their entire 
plumage might be seen. 

At four weeks old the young birds walked 
about uncertainly in their wide dwelling place 
under the oak roots, and made no attempt at 
flying for the very good reason that their long 
wing feathers had not appeared; but when they 
did start to grow, it was with marvelous haste, 
and a week later they were an inch and a half 
long and were accompanied by a similar growth 
of tail feathers. 

The birds now presented a striking and very 
beautiful appearance. The wings and tail feath- 
ers were purplish black, while the plumage on the 
rest of the body was still pure white, and, having 
had four or five weeks growth, resembled nothing 
so much as downy white ostrich tips. 

The old bird brought all manner of food to 
these youngsters and laid it down in the nest for 
the young birds to peck at, which they learned to 
do at an extraordinarily early date. The contrast 
presented between the young birds and the old 
ones was startling, and one dreaded to see the 
great, ungainly mother settle down by the dainty 
young birds, lest the black of her wings might rub 
off. 

To watch the transformation of these young 
birds into a similar likeness to the old ones 



A Buzzard's Nest 181 

promised to be an interesting study, but just at 
this stage of their development some enemy dis- 
covered the nest, and on a later visit we found 
the youngsters lying dead. Had this not occurred, 
they would, in all probability, have been ready to 
fly by the end of the seventh or eighth week after 
they were hatched. This seems a long time in 
comparison to the early flight of our song birds, 
but the body of the buzzard is so much larger 
and heavier it requires a good deal of strength 
to lift it into the air. The contrast between the 
diminutive size of the young birds when first 
hatched and their further marvelous growth is 
amusing, for at first sight they had looked not 
much larger than an over grown silver dollar as 
they lay on the ground. 

Had the nest not been destroyed or the birds 
injured, the old ones would have occupied the 
same spot for years, as a buzzard lives to a good 
old age and is very averse to "moving." 

The flight of a buzzard is full of grace. The 
wings measuring over six feet are curved upward 
at the tips forming an angle to the body and these 
huge propellers require but few motions to carry 
their owner high, and higher to soar easily or to 
float without apparent motion. But, high as 
may be the buzzards never fail to keep watch on 
what transpires below, and let one bird but dis- 
cover carrion and drop to it, the news flies fast 



1 82 Quests of a Bird Lover 

above, and over a long region come birds flocking 
to the feast; how the fact is transmitted in mid 
air is a marvel. 

In our northern states the buzzards come in for 
small notice but in many southern cities they are 
true scavengers and are in every way protected. 

In New Orleans these big ungainly birds drift 
in from the swampy land of the bayous, from the 
shores of the "Golden River" from the lake bor- 
ders of Pontchartrain, and settle heavily in the 
uncleaned streets of the French quarter: here 
they gobble up fearlessly all manner of garbage, 
forming a curious and interesting spectacle. 

Gulls and terns, protected in the north are 
scavengers of the wave in all harbors following 
ships in and out of port, but there is no street 
cleaner that excels that ugly bird of heavy wing — 
the buzzard. 

Out in the swampy land beyond "Metairie 
Ridge" I found a buzzard's nest containing two 
half-grown chicks pridefully stepping in and out 
from the shelter of the great roots of a live oak, 
eyeing me with no fear, but, did I show signs of 
familiarity, hissing at me like cross young goslings. 

The old ones up aloft scolded out warning, 
threatening me everything, and kept such eager 
watch on my movements as to frequently become 
unbalanced on the limb, and clumsily tumble from 



A Buzzard's Nest 183 

it to catch themselves in ponderous flight to an- 
other tree. 

I know of only one buzzard who lent himself at 
all to domesticity, and the care of woman-kind, 
and I assure you it was a benefactor who laid 
hands on the big ungainly fellow at all! But 
"she of the Tender Heart" overcome by com- 
passion when, broken of wing, big, black and re- 
pellant, his strong red neck lying limp, he fell 
from out the blue, straight into her patch of 
sweet peas, gathered him up in her arms, and 
carried him into her summer kitchen — and dis- 
appointment awaited sundry small boys whose 
heads appeared at once on the fence — little 
dreaming that their quarry had drifted into safe 
hands. 

The summer kitchen, vine shaded, was not an 
unpleasant place of refuge, window-lighted, and 
with one long wide upper shelf. 

After a bath in witch-hazel the bird was left on 
the floor to "dry" but he soon managed to flutter 
to the top of a stove (fireless) and from there 
to the shelf where he retired to a corner and 
vented his gratitude in hisses. 

The setting of the broken wing was out of 
the power of his preserver but his appetite she 
quickly satisfied with raw beefsteak, a clean food 
that had not often come the way of this carrion 



184 Quests of a Bird Lover 

picker. For a day or two the captive brooded 
in a corner not allowing himself to be persuaded 
to come out to eat, then hunger got the better of 
obstinacy, for he showed no fear, and custom 
and kindness won his carnivorous heart, and the 
pleasant voice of his friend brought him promptly, 
sidling along the shelf, to take pieces of meat 
from her generous hand. 

As "she of the Tender Heart" was too small 
of stature to reach the shelf, she climbed from 
floor to the stove top, and from thence made a 
long stretch to reach the "buffet" and when the 
buzzard heard milady beginning the pilgrimage 
the long red neck would be immediately stretched 
over the shelf's edge in curiosity to see what 
would come next. With drooping wing, exactly 
as a song bird voices delight, so this clumsy fellow 
welcomed his friend and his food, uttering thanks, 
or greetings in hoarse croaks or grunts of satisfac- 
tion. For many a day the broken-winged bird 
abode contentedly in that summer kitchen; then 
the window opposite the shelf being partly opened 
at the top, he managed in some way to gain the 
opening and disappeared in the most amazing 
manner, broken, dragging wing and all! 



